Why we stay

By Mary DeTurris Poust

It seems that with the ongoing media reports about the sex abuse crisis in the Church come more and more questions from friends and acquaintances about why some of us remain Catholic. Just yesterday I was involved in a brief Facebook discussion on this very topic. Someone asked, "Why do you (and so many others) stay?" The question was addressed to a Facebook friend who had posted something on the abuse scandal, but I decided to respond ever so briefly. Here's what I said (and remember, it's Facebook, so it has to be short and not too heavy):

"Big question to answer in a little space. But, I will say just briefly that this is my home, my family. To leave would be to tear myself away from all I love and all I believe in because of other people's sins. So I stay because, quite frankly, where else would I go or want to go. This Church, with all its human flaws, is beautiful and filled with God's spirit and with all that Jesus taught. You only have to look around at all the good things that are done day after day, year after year, by people working through the Catholic Church. As Peter said, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.'"

Then today, I was trolling around some of my favorite blogs and came across a beautiful response to this same question by fellow Catholic writer Roxane Salonen, who blogs at Peace Garden Mama. Here is a snippet of what she had to say:

"I must confess, whenever evils within the Catholic Church rise to the surface, as they have so loudly recently, I go to Mass the following Sunday expecting the pews to be empty, and I’m always shocked on some level to see that they’re not – that the church is as full as ever. And there I am among those who have returned, clamoring back into the arms of the one who has so often sheltered me, knowing there are still, and always will be, evils lurking somewhere within.

"How can a church be holy and still house such wrongs?

"It seems impossible at times to sort through, yet the answer is very simple. It comes down to this: the Church comprises both God and man, good and evil. This is true not only of the Catholic Church, but every church and every relationship that has ever existed and will exist. The Church teaches truth and offers guidance on how to achieve holiness, even though its members cannot possibly reach perfection in this life. She remains there for us as we reach toward what is good and pure and eternal, even while we move through our earthly lives of suffering and imperfection."

The rest of the post is just as thoughtful and beautiful. Read it by clicking HERE. Have you been asked why you stay? And, if so, how do you answer?

Vatican approves new translation of Mass

By Mary DeTurris Poust

The USCCB has announced that the Vatican has given its "recognitio," or official approval, to the new English translation of the third edition of the Roman Missal, although a date for implementation has not been set yet. It will be up to the USCCB to decide how and when to authorize use of the new translation in dioceses and parishes in the United States. The Office of Divine Worship is currently offering workshops to clergy and diocesan leaders to prepare them for implementation.

In a letter to the Vox Clara Committee that worked on the new translation -- a decade-long process, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that the changes might not be easily accepted by Catholics who have been saying the prayers of the Mass the same way for a lifetime:

"A new task will then present itself, one which falls outside the direct competence of Vox Clara, but which in one way or another will involve all of you – the task of preparing for the reception of the new translation by clergy and lay faithful. Many will find it hard to adjust to unfamiliar texts after nearly forty years of continuous use of the previous translation. The change will need to be introduced with due sensitivity, and the opportunity for catechesis that it presents will need to be firmly grasped. I pray that in this way any risk of confusion or bewilderment will be averted, and the change will serve instead as a springboard for a renewal and a deepening of Eucharistic devotion all over the English-speaking world."

If you'd like to check out some of the changes for yourself, head to the USCCB Roman Missal site by clicking HERE. Click on "Sample Texts" to see General Instruction, Priest's Parts, People's Parts, and the Order of the Mass.

The memo that changed the Church

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

Deacon Greg Kandra, over at The Deacon's Bench, writes about and links to the incredible 10-page memo on the sex abuse scandal written by a layman and father of three in 2002 to Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who was bishop of Belleville and president of the USCCB at the time. The memo, which addresses how the Church handled the abuse crisis, helped shape the changes later put in place to protect children.

Here's a brief excerpt, stunning in its honesty when you consider that this man was speaking to his boss and the head of the bishops' conference:

"You should know by now that our children are more important to Sharon and me than anything in the world. Let me repeat that in bold Italics: Our children are more important to Sharon and me than anything in the world. With all due respect, though you probably come as close to understanding the significance of that statement as any bishop in the Church, you don't. You can't. No priest, no religious, no lay person who is not a parent can truly appreciate the incredible weight of that single sentence any more than I could before Erin was born. Three children later, I'm not sure I fully grasp it yet, and I know I can't adequately articulate it for you in a simple memorandum. Similarly, I could never hope to fully comprehend how your pastoral ministry is the most important thing in the world to you. I can witness your vocation and try to appreciate the extraordinary commitment you have made to the Church, but I am not and will likely never be a priest. I may work in your chancery, but I am, above all else, Sharon's husband and Erin, Jonathan and James' dad.

"As such, just as you are deeply wounded and even angered when I make a comment you believe is not supportive of a Church position or one of Her pillars, so too am I wounded and angered when the Church we both love (and to Whom we have both, in distinctly different degrees, dedicated our working lives) chooses to disregard the wellbeing of Her children -- my children -- to protect Her own icons and Her image."

Go to The Deacon's Bench for the back story by clicking HERE. Then read the memo in its entirety in pdf format by clicking HERE.

Laura Bush on losing her faith

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

In this powerful excerpt from a New York Times' piece about Laura Bush's new book, "Spoken from the Heart," the former first lady talks about the car crash in which she killed another driver and how the experience made her lose her faith in God for "many, many years."

The excerpt says it better than anything else I could write here:

"But it is her description of the deadly accident, and its subsequent impact on her life and her faith, that is the subject Mrs. Bush had most shied away from speaking about in her public life. On a November night in 1963, Mrs. Bush and a girlfriend were hurrying to a drive-in theater when Mrs. Bush, at the wheel of her father’s Chevy Impala, ran a stop sign on a small road and smashed into a car being driven by Mike Douglas, a star athlete and popular student at her school.

“'In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,' she says. 'The whole time,' she adds later, 'I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling "Please, God. Please, God. Please, God," over and over and over again.'

"Mrs. Bush concedes that she and her friend were chatting when she ran the stop sign. But she also suggests a host of factors beyond her control played a role — the pitch-black road, an unusually dangerous intersection, the small size of the stop sign, and the car the victim was driving.

“'It was sporty and sleek, and it was also the car that Ralph Nader made famous in his book Unsafe at Any Speed,' she states. 'He claimed the car was unstable and prone to rollover accidents. A few years later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration went so far as to investigate the Corvair’s handling, but it didn’t reach the same grim conclusions. I was driving my dad’s much larger and heavier Chevy Impala. But none of that would ever ease the night of November 6. Not for me, and never for the Douglases.'

"Mrs. Bush reveals that she was wracked by guilt for years after the crash, especially after not attending the funeral and for not reaching out to the parents of the dead teenager. Her parents did not want her to show up at the funeral, she states, and she ended up sleeping through it.

“'I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,' she says. 'It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard. My begging, to my seventeen-year-old mind, had made no difference. The only answer was the sound of Mrs. Douglas’s sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain.'

"Mrs. Bush goes on to say that in her public life, she has encouraged young drivers who have been in serious accidents to speak to loved ones, counselors or spiritual or pastoral advisers.

“'But while I give this advice in my letters, I didn’t do any of that,' she reveals. 'Most of how I ultimately coped with the crash was by trying not to talk about it, not to think about it, to put it aside. Because there wasn’t anything I could do. Even if I tried.'”

Has there been a moment in your life that made you question God or even turn away from God? If you're willing, share it with us in the comment section and tell us how you found your way back to God.

To read the full article on Laura Bush's new book, click HERE.

Dishonoring doulas

By Mary DeTurris Poust

All three of my children were delivered by midwives in hospitals. I liked the warm, personal touch of the midwives, who honored my wishes when it came to childbirth but still had the medical training necessary to keep things safe. I had considered using a “doula” with our last child because I was with a practice I didn’t know well and due to deliver at a hospital I didn’t know at all.

Doulas are extra caregivers for pregnant women. They accompany women on the journey from pregnancy, through childbirth and into postpartum care. It’s like having an extra set of hands and eyes and ears so that husband and wife can concentrate more fully on the matter at hand – welcoming their child into the world.

Typically, a woman hires a doula early enough in her pregnancy that a bond develops. By the time the big day arrives the doula, mother- and father-to-be, and any other children in the family have grown to become friends on a shared journey.

To me doulas have always been life-focused. After all, why would a woman want to be present for the births of other people’s children again and again unless she truly loved life, especially in its earliest stages. So when I read a recent article on Slate.com, it left me wondering. How could the abortion mentality seep into even this last bastion of care totally devoted to mothers and their children, unborn and newly born?

It seems now doulas – Greek for “women who serve” -- are finding their place at the bedsides of women having abortions. Admittedly, those women need some special care, but not the kind provided by strangers who pat their hands and tell them, “There, there,” during one of the most misguided and saddest moments of their lives.

According to DONA International, a doula association that offers certification and standards of practice in the field, a doula refers to a “trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after birth; or who provides emotional and practical support during the postpartum period.”

A doula “recognizes birth as a key experience the mother will remember all her life,” the DONA website says. Unfortunately, according to the Slate article, some of today’s doulas are shifting their focus to a key experience a woman may regret all her life.

From the Slate story:

“Abortion doula services were unheard of until three years ago, when pro-choice activists within the birth community decided that they should serve the full spectrum of pregnancy choices, whether it's birth, adoption, or abortion. Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell created New York City's Doula Project, a volunteer-based service that provides free doula services to women in New York City. They work with pregnant women who can't afford doulas, expectant birth-mothers at a pro-choice adoption agency, and provide abortion doula services in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Though the public perception of doulas is that they are liberal crunchy types, the community has a strong pro-life contingent. These anti-abortion doulas are less-than-thrilled with the Doula Project. And they're not the only ones who are skeptical. Even as a pro-choice feminist, when I heard about abortion doulas my first thought was: Are women really so fragile that they need to hire a complete stranger to hold their hand at the doctor's?”

Women aren’t the ones who are fragile. It’s the pro-abortion movement that is. Abortion advocates are so caught up in trying to make abortion into something positive akin to childbirth that they are willing to hijack a specialized field of care for mothers in an attempt to legitimize the decision to abort.

I know there are many pro-life doulas out there, women who truly do support life from conception and who reject the abortion mentality. I hope their voices are heard in this new debate on the future of doula care. And, if any of you are reading today, please share your comments on this troubling new development.

Read the full Slate article by clicking HERE.

Giving the Internet a soul

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

Pope Benedict XVI called on Catholic communicators to use new media to help "humanize the mass media" and keep people from becoming "soulless bodies -- objects of exchange and consumption."

The pope made the remarks at a national congress, "Digital Witnesses. Faces and Languages in the Cross-Media Age," sponsored by the Italian bishops' conference April 24.

According to a CNS story, the pope said:

"More than through technical resources, although necessary, we want to confirm ourselves living in this (digital) universe, too, with a believing heart so that it may contribute to giving a soul to the Internet's endless flow of communication."

The pope also told participants in the congress that although the Internet presents risks -- among them intellectual and moral relativism -- it is still an important part of Catholic communicators' role in spreading a "passion for God."

"Without fear we want to set sail for the digital sea, facing the open waters with the same passion that has governed the ship of the church for two thousand years," the pope said.

The CNS story by Carol Glatz also included comments by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, who told participants that "secrecy and confidentiality, even given their positive aspects, are not values that are cultivated by today's culture. It is necessary to be able to have nothing to hide."

To read the full CNS story, click HERE.

Planting with Mary in mind

By Mary DeTurris Poust

With spring in full swing, it's that time of year when gardeners want to get outside, dig their hands into the earth and begin planting. This year, why not think about creating a Mary Garden, with flowers and a statue to honor the Blessed Mother? That's my Mary Garden in the photo above, although here in upstate New York planting won't begin in earnest until any danger of frost is gone, which is late May. So this photo gives only the slightest hint of what's to come, with a native Bleeding Heart (Mary's Heart) in bloom next to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Those are Hostas (Assumption Lilies) in front. Hyacinth (Lily-among-Thorns) and Lily of the Valley (Our Lady's Tears) are scattered out of view. Petunias (Our Lady's Praises) and Marigolds (Mary's Gold) will be planted later.

If you're interested in linking your praying to your planting, or if you'd like to find other creative ways to expand your spiritual life into the outdoors, there are some great websites to get you started. Click HERE to visit an expansive Mary Garden site with detailed information on flower species, names and symbolism, as well as design ideas and tips for both new and experienced gardeners.

One of my favorite sites on this subject was created by Ann Ball, a beloved and esteemed Catholic author who died in June 2008. Her website, which is still active, has an explanation of the medieval custom of Mary Gardens, which you can view by clicking HERE. And, if you can find a copy through a third-party seller or in your local library, try to pick up Ann's Catholic Traditions in the Garden (1997, Our Sunday Visitor), a great little book on incorporating spiritual elements in your yard and garden plans.

Yes, Obama does have an abortion litmus test

Surprise. President Barack Obama will name a supporter of legalized abortion to the Supreme Court to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens. Meeting with reporters at the White House April 21, Obama employed one of those rhetorical sleight-of-hands for which he’s famous, saying he’d have no “litmus tests” for the Supreme Court — and then announcing one.

It’s this: the nominee must be someone committed to women’s “ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction.” Translated from the code language common on such matters these days, that means someone committed to uphold Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which for the first time ever legalized abortion in the United States. Surprise.

Obama’s description is said to fit the 10 or so candidates on the White House shortlist for the Supreme Court. The president’s decision is expected in a month or less, with Senate confirmation hearings during the summer, and the new justice presumably on the court by the time it starts up in October.

If, as seems certain, the nominee is pro-choice, pro-life groups will protest and some Republican senators will vote against confirming him or her. But there’s little or no chance the nomination will be defeated unless some other issue besides abortion comes up.

If there’s any small bright lining here for pro-lifers, it lies in the fact that Stevens, the 90-year-old justice who will step down from the court when its current term ends in June, also is adamantly pro-choice. The nomination and confirmation of a pro-choice successor therefore will leave the makeup of the court where it is now on legalized abortion, which is four opposed and five in favor (counting Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s first Supreme Court pick, who hasn’t yet formally tipped her hand on the issue).

On health care reform, the bishops got it right

By Russell Shaw

In the wake of passage of the health care bill, some Catholics are complaining that the bishops erred in the end by opposing the measure over the abortion issue. The hierarchy, it’s said, ought to have set aside its objections to abortion for the sake of the great goal of universal health coverage.

Speaking of setting aside, let’s pass over the question of how a plan that restricts legal immigrants’ access to coverage and denies it entirely to illegals can properly be described as “universal.” Universal for me but not universal for you, maybe? But leaving that aside, let’s take the complaint at face value.

The criticism aimed at the bishops would represent a tenable position — not correct, but reasonable at least — provided one crucial condition were met: namely, that the bishops had unrealistically demanded the total abolition of government-funded abortion as the price for their support for the bill.

But they didn’t. They asked for retention of the status quo on abortion funding in place since 1976 in the form of the well-known Hyde Amendment limiting Medicaid abortions to cases involving rape, incest, or the mother’s health.

Prodded by the abortion lobby, however, the Obama administration and Congress said no to that. So, convinced that the legislation in its final form opens the door to the funding of elective abortions, the bishops had no other choice except to oppose it — making clear as they did so that they continued to support truly universal health coverage.

Recall the sequence of events. Last fall, President Obama affirmed his support for the status quo on funding — that’s to say, Hyde. In November, the House passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and others incorporating Hyde-type limitations in the bill. In December, however, the Senate voted for expanded abortion funding. Obama, reversing himself without acknowledging it, thereupon agreed.

Writing in The Washington Post, Stupak, who’s retiring from Congress, says he acted in good faith before the crucial second vote by the House on March 21 in accepting, in lieu of language in the bill limiting abortion funding, the promise of an executive order from Obama. At the same time, he complains that some prolifers who supported his original amendment actually wanted the health care bill to fail.

No doubt. But if the Michigan congressman wants people to accept his good faith, he needs to reciprocate by recognizing the good faith of others. There are, after all, pro-lifers who support health care reform but believe for non-frivolous reasons that the version enacted through the strenuous efforts of Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership has too many serious shortcomings over and above expanded abortion funding to have deserved to pass.

The position boils down to saying that if — as was so often claimed — this truly was the last shot we’d have at health care reform for a generation or more, then we should have gotten it right.

As for Obama’s executive order, pro-life and pro-abortion spokespersons agree that it doesn’t amount to much. The consensus is that it’s unenforceable and simply not capable of overriding the health plan’s opening to the funding of elective abortions. The reason can be stated very simply: Law trumps executive order.

The bottom line is that American bishops, at the end of the protracted health care debate, stood exactly where they’d stood all along. They were in favor of universal coverage that is truly universal but opposed to expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion to include elective abortions. They were right, and they deserve our thanks.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

Celebrating the service of volunteers

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

In honor of National Volunteer Week, April 19-23, Catholic Charities USA is highlighting the work of individual volunteers and volunteer programs from across the country on its website, which you can visit by clicking HERE. See if you recognize someone you know, or submit your favorite volunteer.

"A heartfelt thanks to these wonderful individuals who provide witness of God's preferential love for the poor and vulnerable in our society," said Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, in a press release. "They are truly doing God's work, delivering help and creating hope day-in and day-out, without seeking anything in return."

According to Catholic Charities USA, every year more than 200,000 people lend their time and talent to local Catholic Charities agencies which serve nearly 9 million people annually.

Remembering the Oklahoma City bombing victims 15 years later UPDATED

"And Jesus Wept" statue across from the Oklahoma City National Memorial

By Mary DeTurris Poust

It's hard to believe 15 years have gone by since Timothy McVeigh took the lives of 168 people when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. As with most horrifying tragedies, we most likely remember exactly where we were at the moment we heard the news and all these years later feel fresh grief when we see the playback of news coverage or the memorial to the victims where the building once stood.

Today, we remember and pray for the victims, including more than a dozen children, and we pray for the survivors and the families of victims. And while we're at it, maybe it's a good time to pray for a conversion of heart in all those people who have hatred in their hearts and evil intentions in their thoughts.

If you have not already read it, this milestone anniversary is a good time to pick up Their Faith Has Touched Us: The Legacies of Three Young Oklahoma City Bombing Victims by Catholic author Maria de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda. In the book, Scaperlanda, tells the stories of victims Julie Welch, Valerie Koelsch, and Mark Bolte, who "were not people of great deeds, but people who were great in living out their faithfulness in the ordinary events and encounters of life."

UPDATED:
Scaperlanda has written a reflection, "We Will Never Forget: 15 Years After the Oklahoma City Bombing," about her experience covering the aftermath of the bombing for Catholic News Service. Read it on U.S. Catholic's blog by clicking HERE.

Parents want more control over inappropriate content in media

By Mary DeTurris Poust

One of the only prime-time shows we allow our children to watch is American Idol. They love it, and it has become family TV night for us. While some of you might consider this show offensive in general, it is not offensive in the usual sense. No bad language, no sexual situations, no violence, no drug or alcohol use. Every once in a while you might get a slightly suggestive comment or guest performer, but overall we have found it to be fairly wholesome.

I wish I could say the same of the commercials that run every few minutes. Our older children, who are ages 13 and 9, are trained to avert their eyes and cover their ears during almost every commercial break, when ads for series and products that have no business in prime time make their way onto the screen. When even covered eyes and ears won't do, we try switching channels. But to what? It seems every station is rife with half-naked, gun-toting, foul-mouthed, Viagra-popping people. On a regular basis, I threaten to give the TV set the old heave ho.

It turns out our concerns are similar to what most other parents are feeling. In a national survey commissioned by the USCCB regarding the impact of the media on children, parents expressed "deep concern" over "inappropriate content" and said they want help from the industry and even the government in order to control what their children see and hear.

In the Parents’ Hopes & Concerns About the Impact of Media on their Children study, more than 80 percent of parents said they want to be able to "control access to media content that depicts violence, sex, illegal drug use, alcohol abuse and profane language. Of special concern are media portrayals of illegal drug use and alcohol abuse, which currently are not considered by many ratings and parental control systems," a release from the USCCB said.

And despite the dangers associated with video games, cell phones and music, parents are more concerned about what's on TV and the Internet, especially those pesky commercials. In the survey, 61 percent of respondents said they are concerned about ads with inappropriate content and three-fourths said they would use parental controls more if they could block commercial content.

On a positive note, more than 90 percent of parents said that their families have rules about TV and other media, while more than half said they already use parental controls for media. But parental controls aren't always easy to figure out, and parents expressed frustration and asked for help.

From the USCCB release:

"Two-thirds say there are three factors that would increase their use of parental controls: better understanding of parental controls; ability to block television ads they think contain inappropriate content; and greater availability of media products with parental controls already set.

"Three-fourths of respondents say makers of media products should do more to help protect children from inappropriate media content, while 58 percent say government should also do more."

A little outside help would certainly be welcome. First, however, the media has to acknowledge that there is a problem. Then maybe we can make some progress. For now, at our house, we'll have to rely on a couple of old-fashioned remedies: hands over ears and eyes, and, when all else fails, the off button.

Read the full results of the study HERE.

Missing the point of First Communion

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Two of my three children have already received their First Eucharist, so I've seen how this holiest of sacraments can get turned into a three-ring circus, what with the fancy hair-dos and even fancier dresses, not to mention the after parties that rival weddings in some families and towns.

I have to admit that I never felt any pressure to keep up with the Joneses. Although I live in a very comfortable town where lots of folks do like to go all out on special occasions, there were just as many families who opted for simple suits and dresses for their children and simple buffet gatherings of baked ziti and salad after the sacramental meal that was the real main event.

So I found an article in the Irish Independent (h/t to Francis Toms) somewhat intriguing when it focused on atheists and people of other faiths who feel forced to give their children something like a Communion party even though they don't believe. All of the folks interviewed said that, despite the fact that Ireland is overwhelmingly Catholic and the Catholic faith is an accepted part of education, they never felt pressured by the Church or schools to have their children make First Communion. The pressure came from their children.

So this has nothing to do with a dominant religion asserting itself and making people feel like they need to be Catholic. This has to do with spoiled children asserting themselves by insisting they get everything everyone else has, even when it is opposed to everything their family believes. Or doesn't believe.

From one atheist mom's interview with the Independent:

"We also had 'Abby day' on the Communion day as a kind of rite of passage. Both our families got together and we celebrated her as part of the family and the wider community."

Abby day? Not exactly the way to make a child less self-centered, is it? And certainly not in the spirit of what First Communion is all about.

This story, although it's mostly about atheists, has a lot to teach those of us who believe in the Catholic faith. It's a reminder of how quickly the special events of our Church life can deteriorate into just another party if we don't watch out.

This year as First Communion season approaches, let's try to remember that Jesus is the reason for this season too. The veils are pretty, but they don't need to be made by the Communion-circuit equivalent of Vera Wang. The parties are important, too, because community is part of our faith and gathering for a meal with the people we love is a wonderful way to take what we hear in Church out into the world. But the party should be about celebrating a real religious milestone not about outdoing the neighbors.

It's not about the stuff we can buy in a store that makes First Eucharist special. It's about the One who gave us the ultimate gift, a gift that will certainly top anything you'll find in those boxes and envelopes left by the long line of party guests.

Read the full story about Communion day envy in Ireland, HERE.

Gender issues reach new levels of insanity in Maine

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Just when you thought the world couldn't get any crazier, someone in Maine opens the door to a whole new kind of crazy. The Maine Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines that will ban schools in that state from "enforcing gender divisions" through such out-dated and outrageous things as having separate bathrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls.

You heard me right. Under this new proposal, which was crafted after a 12-year-old transgender boy (that's a whole other blog post) was allegedly discriminated against when he was denied access to the girls' room, boys and girls will be able to use each others' restroom and locker room facilities and join all-male or all-female sports teams or organizations, regardless of gender. I don't know about your kids, but my 13- and almost-10-year-old would panic if he or she walked into the bathroom or locker room and found someone of the opposite sex in there. And with good reason.

Have we moved so far away from our ability to understand biology and sexual identity that we simply refuse to acknowledge that there are physical differences between boys and girls, men and women? At a time when the world is hyper-focused on the safety of children -- as we should be -- are we really going to turn a blind eye to eighth-grade boys sharing bathrooms with fourth-grade girls or, heaven forbid, high school boys sharing locker rooms with girls of any age? The icing on the cake is that students will not be obligated to provide medical documentation proving they are "transgendered." Are the folks on the Maine Human Rights Commission caught in a collective brain freeze?

From a FoxNews story on the issue:

"Ken Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, says the guidelines set out in the commission's draft brochure pose some serious safety issues as well.

"'If my kid walks into a girls' bathroom and sees a man in there, the child is going to instinctively feel that something’s wrong. If you create an entirely new climate where anything goes, you’re going to create increased confusion, and those with ill intentions could take advantage of that confusion and decreased ability to make a distinction,' Trump told FoxNews.com.

"'The reality is, every day we’re seeing more and more cases of exploitation of children and others, and this would be creating an environment where the risk is increased for that exploitation.

"...'Educators at the middle school level struggle every day in trying to keep student hormonal issues under control so that the focus can be on education,' he said. 'We certainly don’t need to create an environment to accelerate and exacerbate the issue and further the experimentation, the inappropriate comments, inappropriate touching, groping, grabbing, sexual assaults and in some cases, rapes in schools.'"

When I walk into a ladies' room at church or the locker room at the YMCA, I kind of assume the only other people in there will be women, or, in some cases, girls with their mothers. If I were to walk into a restroom and find a man or boy there, I'd do an about face and leave. Only once did I have to use a men's room -- at an insanely chaotic outdoor concert where there was no other choice. The other women and I dragged in our husbands and boyfriends and stationed them as guards outside our doors, and we are grown women. Doesn't matter. We are different, and we know it. Let's not try to pretend otherwise.

The Church is so often the punch line in jokes about sexuality, or repressed sexuality. And yet it is the Church that seems to be one of the few places were male and female sexuality is recognized and honored for exactly what it is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it like this:

"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life (2333)...Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way." (2335)

I think the popular translation of that reads: No co-ed locker rooms! To read the full story about the Maine decision, click HERE.

A woman who walked the walk

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Every morning when I pull my local daily newspaper out of the plastic bag and toss it on the table next to my coffee, I automatically flinch in preparation for the next story about Catholics and scandal. So when I saw a front page story this weekend commemorating the life of a local Catholic Colombian woman who had left a powerful imprint on the people she met, my spirits began to lift.

The article never specifically mentioned that she was Catholic, although it noted that she attended daily Mass at the chapel of nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It seems that Rosa Murillo would often be mistaken for a homeless woman as she traversed the streets -- and dumpsters -- of Troy, N.Y., in search of bottles and cans. But she didn't need the money for herself; she had a good job as a nanny. Instead, she collected returnables in order to get money to send to charities around the world.

From Paul Grondahl's story in the Times Union:

"Murillo died Tuesday at 93. At her funeral on Friday, the Rev. Edward Kacerguis described her as 'this awesome, tiny, frail little woman' who inspired others with her humility and generosity.

"He said she practiced a Christian motto: 'It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.'

"Murillo spent 41 years working for the Lombard family on Burdett Avenue on the edge of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus, less than a block from RPI's Christ Sun of Justice Chapel & Cultural Center. About 100 people attended her funeral service there, where Murillo attended daily Mass and regularly stopped in to pray.

"'She was a woman of deep, profound faith,' said Kacerguis, an RPI chaplain who saw her almost daily, and never without a warm smile.

In perhaps one of the most touching elements of this story, when Rosa's health started failing, the woman who had been her employer for 41 years, already 88 years old herself, became Rosa's caretaker. Now that is a story of Christian love lived out in a very real way. Rest in peace, Rosa.

To read the full story, click HERE.

Kiesle case is no smoking gun

This is a Murphy redux.

Despite how The New York Times and the Associated Press and others are interpreting the Kiesle case, the documentation they base their stories on actually show the local diocese to have fumbled this clerical sex abuse case, not the Vatican.

A couple of key points:

1. What we're dealing with here is a petition by the priest for dispensation from the obligation of the clerical state, including celibacy. This is not a situation where the local diocese is asking for the canonical penalty of dismissal from the clerical state, which would require Church court proceedings that the diocese is obliged to start. Fr. Z does a good job explaining this.

The stories I've seen in the mainstream media fail to make that distinction, and thus frame the story inaccurately: The Times headlines its story, "Pope put off punishing abusive priest" [No, this was not a case of "punishing"]. The AP does better, but repeatedly uses the colloquialism "defrocking," which usually is applied to the punishment of dismissal, not granting of a dispensation.


2. That distinction is important because the process for handling petitions and penalties is vastly different — and therefore, it dictates a whole different reading of the Vatican's response. After the granting of thousands of petitions for dispensation from the clerical state in the 1960s and 1970s, the Vatican, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II, saw this as a scandal that needed to be addressed (as Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio points out). So the Vatican made the process more difficult and lengthy, with the result that granting of dispensations slowed to a trickle.

This is the context for the Kiesle petition in the early 80s, shortly after Pope John Paul put the brakes on clerical dispensations. Update: A Vatican lawyer says it looks like Cardinal Ratzinger's letter appears to be a form letter used by the congregation in its first response to petitions for dismissal from the clerical state.

3. The Diocese of Oakland had every means at its disposal to contain the threat of Kiesle to children — but apparently did a very poor job of using them.

It could have opened a Church trial to dismiss Kiesle from the clerical state. Apparently it did not. Granted, Kiesle could have appealed that sentence to a Church court in Rome, a process that is also very lengthy and with apparently unpredictable results. (Consider the Anthony Cipolla case, in which a Vatican court ordered him reinstated, the local bishop refused, and the Vatican court finally relented and reversed itself.) Since 2001, of course, the Vatican has ordered that all such cases go to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to determine either administrative penalties or the need for a Church trial for abusive priests. That has expedited the process considerably.

The Diocese of Oakland could have stripped Kiesle of his faculties and removed him from all ministry. But one of the documents shows the outrage of the diocesan director of youth ministry that Kiesle was still participating in parish youth ministry events, apparently even after the bishop and other diocesan officials had been notified.

The point is: Granting Kiesle's petition to be dispensed from the clerical state would have had no practical effect in containing the danger that he posed to youth. In fact, not doing so allowed the diocese to keeper tighter control over Kiesle's activities — and it looks like they fumbled.

There may yet be a smoking gun showing that Cardinal Ratzinger showed disastrous judgment or callous disregard for clerical sex abuse — but this is not it.

Update: California-based Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena makes the same point in a statement released today: "During the entire course of the proceeding the priest remained under the control, authority and care of the local bishop who was responsible to make sure he did no harm, as the canon (Church) law provides. The abuse case wasn't transferred to the Vatican at all."

Notre Dame adopts pro-life statement, principles

Just announced this morning, the University of Notre Dame has adopted a new institutional statement underscoring its commitment to the dignity of life from womb to tomb.

It also announced that it would rework its process for charitable giving to exclude any individual or organization that "consistently advocates research or other activities that conflict with fundamental Catholic moral principles." The new principles can be found here.

Both are products of Notre Dame's Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life that was set up by university president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, in the wake of school's controversial award of an honorary law doctorate to pro-choice President Barack Obama.

The new statement reads:

“Consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church on such issues as abortion, research involving human embryos, euthanasia, the death penalty, and other related life issues, the University of Notre Dame recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”

Parish priests missed by U.S. census

By Mary DeTurris Poust

You've probably seen the ads for the census: "Stand up and be counted!" That is, unless you're a Catholic priest living at a parish rectory. Then the census folks aren't so worried about whether you're being counted.

A recent email from the USCCB to dioceses across the country recommends that priests specifically request census forms or miss out on being included in the population count.

According to the email, U.S. Government computers don't send census forms to "businesses," and the Census Bureau lists all churches as businesses. So any priests living at church addresses will not receive forms.

To request forms, call 800-563-6499, ext 9650.

Confess contraception

By Msgr. Owen F. Campion

The Church teaches that artificial birth control is seriously sinful. Any priest who hears only a few confessions knows very well the widespread use of artificial birth control among Catholics. Priests also know that many Catholics receive holy Communion despite practicing artificial contraception.

Many Catholics never confess using artificial birth control, maybe because they practice moral methods of regulating birth, maybe because they have convinced themselves that the Church is wrong or maybe because they fear the confessor will confront them.

Pope Paul VI’s historic encyclical Humanae Vitae, on the subject of artificial birth control, especially urged priests to be patient and compassionate.

The Church, in general, admonishes confessors to be patient and compassionate. This does not mean setting aside the moral teaching of the Church.

Compassion and patience cannot negate what long ago was judged to be essential to a good confession — namely, admission of an act as sinful, acceptance of personal responsibility in sinning and a firm purpose not to sin anymore in this regard.

Often, in the confessional, priests hear a penitent confess using artificial birth control, and the priest strongly suspects that, even if penitents say otherwise, there is no resolve whatsoever to end the practice.


Confessors are not supposed to go into lurid detail in sexual matters. The priest must take penitents at their word, and the priest realizes that, given human nature, no one is beyond repeating a past sin. However, if the penitent admits this sin and absolutely refuses to stop sinning in this regard, under classic Church rules, the priest should withhold absolution.

This rarely happens. It is part of a muddled situation, a vicious cycle entrapping priests and people alike. Artificial contraception is so much a part of Western life that it is taken for granted. Very real circumstances seem to make it logical. Also strong these days is the opinion that Church authority itself is open to questioning and altogether discounts the doctrine about artificial birth control, as well as other teachings.

Added to this is the unfortunate fact that among many Catholics, the Church’s position is seldom understood or, at times, not even known. In some cases, it is not taught, either because instructors in Catholic doctrine disagree with the teaching or because, to a great extent, priests disagree with it or fear that if they preach about it, people will walk away.

Most priests already see that too many Catholics are walking away, for many reasons, especially young Catholics. Few priests want to send even more out the door.

Still, this fact proves all the fuzzy thinking among Catholics about artificial birth control. Confessions demonstrate that many Catholics feel in their hearts it is wrong. Yet, somehow, they still practice it and still consider themselves worthy of receiving holy Communion.

Priests must be compassionate and patient, but they will best serve people not by looking the other way, nor by belittling Church teaching, nor by lowering the boom, but by teaching the Church’s view that artificial birth control is wrong, and carefully explaining why the Church sees it as wrong.

It is not just about priests. Married Catholics must question their own behavior, firmly and objectively, and hear the Church, believing that the Church teaches the word of God, and that individual interpretation is, at best, risky.

Priests and people need to approach this issue honestly and frankly. No Catholic can accept one magisterial doctrine and reject another. It is that simple.

Msgr. Owen F. Campion is OSV associate publisher. This column appears in the April 18, 2010 issue of OSV Newsweekly.

Magister decodes accusations against pope

I asked the esteemed and veteran Vatican watcher, Sandro Magister, to write an analysis for OSV Newsweekly on Pope Benedict XVI and accusations about his role in handling cases of clerical sex abuse. This will appear in the April 18 issue.

Here it is:


A few miles outside Rome there is a village called Rignano Flaminio. For more than three years, it has been wracked by accusations of sexual abuse of children. The incidents are alleged to have taken place in a day care center, by three teachers and a television writer. After three years, the criminal investigation hasn’t ascertained any sure facts and the trial has yet to begin. Journalists incline toward the innocence of the accused. But no newspaper today is discussing this case, the most sensational in Italy in the last decade, because the Church has nothing to do with it, and thus it doesn’t make news.

Another memorable case in Italy took place exactly 10 years ago, and this one did involve a priest, Father Giorgio Govoni of the Diocese of Modena, who was greatly loved by his parishioners but accused of child sex abuse in the context of satanic rituals. Father Govoni died of a heart attack not long after being harangued in court by the prosecutor, who asked for a 14-year prison sentence. But he was innocent. A year later, an appeals court found that the entire web of accusations against him was false.
 
Discerning the truth

These are only two cases among thousands, in Italy as well as in other countries, but they are enough to get an idea of how difficult it is in this field to distinguish truth from lies.
If you look at cases from the 1960s and 1970s, the difficulty grows beyond measure. This is the background against which a theologian named Father Joseph Ratzinger, later archbishop of Munich and cardinal, later prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and finally Pope Benedict XVI, began to decode this plague of humanity and of the Church called “pedophilia,” love of children.

This is a “love” that in the second half of the 20th century became an object of worship in the fiction masterpiece “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov.

They were the years of “sexual liberation,” of primacy given to sexual instinct. A manifesto signed by French intellectuals — including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Paris student revolutions of 1968 and today a European parliamentarian — went to the point of laying claim to pedophilia as the newest conquest. Even the victims of sexual abuse remained silent. Accusations were rare and poorly received.

The permissive contagion didn’t spare the Catholic Church, including its hierarchy. In the United States, there was a bishop who, with disarming candor, told why he lived an undisciplined life in those years. Upon his resignation from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., after admitting he had sexually abused a student while seminary rector, Bishop Anthony O’Connell said that when it happened in 1975 he felt influenced by the mentality of that time, in which “Masters and Johnson was big” and a “climate of sexual experimenting” prevailed.
Reporting his comments in The New York Times March 9, 2002, was religion reporter Laurie Goodstein, the same one who in those same pages March 25, 2010, accused Cardinal Ratzinger of a “cover-up” from 1996 to 1998 of pedophile acts committed 20 years earlier by a Milwaukee priest named Lawrence Murphy.

This article in The New York Times resounded worldwide, and is emblematic for a number of reasons.

First, and above all, because of its judgment of facts. It properly accompanied its online article with the documents upon which it was based. But those documents also provide the basis for a diametrically opposed interpretation, in which neither Cardinal Ratzinger nor the Vatican authorities end up having any blame. Instead it was the diocese that acted badly. Not to mention the civil authorities, who at that time rejected the accusations as inconsistent — and without receiving the slightest censure today, even in the pages of the most fastidious New York Times.

Further, the article is emblematic in how it assigns roles in the drama. The “good” person is the ex-archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland. That’s not a new role for him. Forced to resign in 2002 after it came to light that he had had an affair with a theology student and paid him $450,000 in exchange for silence, Archbishop Weakland wasn’t pilloried for this in the “liberal” press; in fact, he was treated with great regard, as befit the renowned champion of a progressive Church that he was.

But there’s more. In 2009, Archbishop Weakland published a memoir called “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. Memoirs of an Archbishop.” It is more than 400 pages of self-defense, in which the adversary and ultimate responsible party — even of the author’s sexual deviations — is Cardinal Ratzinger, in his inquisitorial harshness.

A reverent preface to the book bears the signature of Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, a leading exponent of the “liberal” wing of American Catholicism. And when the book was published, Goodstein wrote a favorable review May 14, 2009, for The New York Times.
 
Impartial report?
All this is to note that the newspaper that carried out the strongest attack on Pope Benedict in these recent weeks is not at all “impartial.” It has an agenda that it does not hide. It is the same agenda of those who, from the vast inventory of pedophilia in the last half century in the world, fish only for those cases which — by date or place — can be bent to Pope Benedict, both as archbishop of Munich and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But paradoxically, the pedophilia cases aimed like weapons at Cardinal Ratzinger by the world’s media help one understand at least this: that the current pope was truly the leader of a change in the Church’s way of facing this plague.

Until 2001, cases of clerical pedophilia didn’t fall under the Vatican’s purview, but to the local bishops. It was they who frequently covered them up or handled them poorly, accomplices also in the permissive climate described above. If a bishop turned to Rome, it was only when cases dealt with an offense involving the Sacrament of Confession — grave sins reserved to the Holy See. In 1998, to cite an example of primary importance, the accusers and victims of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, denounced him to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and asked for a canonical trial.

As prefect of the Vatican congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger examined one after another of these accusations and perceived the seriousness of the problem. He learned that the bishops didn’t know how to deal with them as they should. In 2001, with full agreement from Pope John Paul II, he ordered that dioceses from that point forward submit all cases of clerical pedophilia to the congregation.

Cardinal Ratzinger also introduced a radical simplification of the procedures. He understood that one couldn’t wait in every case for a civil sentence before starting a Church trial because of the uncertainty and time required. He encouraged investigations that would result in rapid disciplinary actions. In the last 10 years, 60 percent of Catholic priests accused of pedophilia have been sanctioned thus: with an order by Church authority to retire to a private life “of penance and prayer,” and in the most serious cases, stripping of the clerical state.

Once elected pope, Benedict hit two founders of religious congregations, until then seen as untouchable, with this sort of sanction: Father Gino Burresi, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Father Maciel.

And when Ireland was revealed as tragically fertile terrain for clerical pedophilia and episcopal obscurity, Pope Benedict grabbed the rudder, tracing, for an entire national Church, a path of penitence and regeneration with his unprecedented and great March 19 pastoral letter to Irish Catholics.

Today it is against this pope that stones are thrown. And from the same tribunal that exalts sexuality as pure instinct, free from every bond, even more so if preached by the Church.

Sandro Magister, a “vaticanista” for www.chiesa.espressonline.it, writes from Rome.

Breaking: Southern Catholic College folds

Unbelievable. Southern Catholic College, the new Catholic college just outside Atlanta, Georgia, is suddenly shutting its doors because it's broke. The school was just taken over by the Legion of Christ this year, and the fact that the order is under investigation by the Vatican may have something to do with donors' reluctance to keep the school going. But to not even have money in the bank to finish out the school year? Wow. A sad day for the students, staff and faculty, I'm sure.


Below is the email from the president of SCC announcing the closure.

From: Fr. Shawn Aaron
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 9:31 AM
To: All Faculty; All Staff; All Students
Subject: Urgent update about Southern Catholic College
Importance: High

I pray that you had a fruitful Holy Week and a very blessed Easter! Each of you has been in my prayers and sacrifices in an even more particular way during this time.

On Wednesday of Holy Week, March 31, Fr. Brian Higgins visited a benefactor to solicit financial help that would ensure the financial viability of Southern Catholic. I am extremely grateful to him for his effort –as I am grateful to the benefactor for even considering our petition for support. Unfortunately, it was not to be. This has proven to be the last in a series of efforts to procure financing that would allow us to at least complete the semester on May 13.

I deeply regret that I must inform you that, as of Thursday, April 15, Southern Catholic will close its doors for the semester. It pains me to evedn write this phrase. It also doubly distresses me that, not only must I communicate this difficult news; I am prevented from communicating it in person. The timing of the request of the benefactor on March 31 coupled with Spring Break has forced me to draft this note as opposed to telling you in person. Please forgive me for this.

There will be a general assembly for Faculty, Staff and Students on Monday, April 12, at 10AM. This way I can field the questions you will certainly have. We will also provide detailed information for Faculty, Staff and Students relevant to each group regarding specifics such as transcripts, grades, graduation, COBRA, unemployment, etc… All of this information will be provided on April 12.

For all students:
·        NPEC has confirmed that our students will receive full credit for the entire semester even though we are required to close our doors on April 15.
·        Students may stay on campus from April 11-15, in order to say goodbye to fellow students, collect your belongings, request pertinent information from Academic Affairs, Financial Affairs, and check-in and out with Student Affairs.

Words cannot express how profoundly sorrowful I am at this situation. Yet I also know that Our Lord has proven himself stronger than death and therefore stronger than our pain, weaknesses and circumstances. We must continually turn to him for strength.

As always, my door is open for those who wish to speak with me. Please know that my prayers are constantly with all of you. Please pray for me.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Shawn Aaron, LC
President

Mexican-American archbishop for L.A.

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

As had been rumored on Twitter and blogs yesterday, the Vatican made its much-anticipated appointment to Los Angeles this morning. In a move sure to be met with joy in the Latino Catholic community across the country, Mexican-born Archbishop José H. Gomez of San Antonio was named coadjutor archbishop of Los Angeles.

Here's the release from the USCCB:

Pope Benedict XVI has named Archbishop José H. Gomez of San Antonio, 58, as Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles.

The appointment was made public in Washington, April 6, by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States. As coadjutor bishop, Archbishop Gomez is in line to succeed the current diocesan archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, 74, upon his retirement.

José Horacio Gomez was born in Monterrey, Mexico, December 26, 1951. He attended the National University of Mexico where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. In college he joined Opus Dei, an institution founded by Saint Josemaria Escrivá to help people turn their work and daily activities into occasions for growing closer to God, serving other and improving society. Opus Dei became a personal prelature in 1982. Archbishop Gomez studied theology in Rome and at the University of Navarre in Spain, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in theology and a doctorate in moral theology. He was ordained a priest of Opus Dei, August 15, 1978, in Torreciudad, Spain.

After ordination he pursued pastoral work with college and high school students in Spain and Mexico. In 1987, he was sent to what was then the Diocese of Galveston-Houston to minister for Opus Dei in several capacities in Texas. He became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

As a priest, Father Gomez held positions with several U.S. Catholic organizations. Between 1995-1999, he was president of the National Association of Hispanic Priests (ANSH) and its executive director, 1999-2001. He was treasurer of the National Catholic Council of Hispanic Ministry, 1998-2001.

In 1999, he became the Vicar of Opus Dei for the State of Texas. Pope John Paul II appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, January 23, 2001. On December 29, 2004 the pope appointed him Archbishop of San Antonio.

As a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Gomez was first chairman of the Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, and now chairs the Committee on National Collections’ Subcommittee for the Church in Latin America and the Task Force on the Spanish-language Bible. He is chair-elect of the Committee on Migration and a member of the Committee on Doctrine.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony was appointed Archbishop of Los Angeles July 15, 1985. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals, June 28, 1991. Prior to this appointment he served as Auxiliary Bishop of Fresno, California, 1975-1980, and Bishop of Stockton, California, 1980-1985.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, includes 8,762 square miles. It has a population of 11,606,889 with 4,176,296, or 36 percent, of them Catholic.

Troubling conclusions from clerical sex abuse scandal

By Russell Shaw

It’s probably premature to think the latest furor over clergy sex abuse has begun to subside, but by no means is it too soon to draw some useful, troubling conclusions from what has happened so far. Here are three.

First, the coverup of abuse in years past has done and continues to do enormous harm. Are there more time bombs ticking away in ecclesiastical files one place or another waiting to explode?

Explain until you’re blue in the face that time and again these horrible things happened years, indeed decades, ago: if the coverup has continued until now, people will be furious just the same — and they’ll blame those in charge now for what happened back then.

Many Church leaders have yet to grasp that the culture of secrecy has to go. Here and there that seems to be sinking in, but it’s slow going. Until it’s universally recognized that the ordinary presumption in Church affairs should favor openness, with secrecy reserved for cases of real necessity, there’s more trouble ahead.

The second conclusion is that Pope Benedict has been very shabbily treated during this latest go-round.

His record — as archbishop of Munich, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now as pope — needs no apologies. Indeed, in the last decade especially he’s shown courage and foresight in his handling of the abuse crisis.

But you’d never know that from the critics. They accuse Benedict of mishandling two abuse cases in particular.

In one, the vicar general of the Munich archdiocese returned to pastoral ministry an abuser-priest who’d had psychiatric treatment without telling Cardinal Ratzinger. In the other, involving a Milwaukee priest, the former judicial vicar of the archdiocese says the trial of this elderly, dying man was terminated — and the man died — three years before jurisdiction over such cases was transferred to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Vatican congregation.

That’s all. Efforts to use these incidents to indict the pope would be laughable if the matter weren’t so serious.

Benedict didn’t get a lot of help from his Vatican colleagues in the early days of this dustup. The Vatican appeared to have been caught flat-footed, and it responded clumsily or by clamming up. Here’s a fresh reminder that the Holy See needs someone skilled in hands-on crisis management. That isn’t the pope’s job, and it’s obvious that no one else is doing the job now.

The third conclusion is that elements of the media abandoned elementary standards of fairness in this episode. It’s hard not to think that happened because they sensed a fresh opportunity to strike a blow at the Church — indeed, at the pope himself.

If not, then what really did pass through the minds of people in the newsrooms of major outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post to account for various bizarre editorial decisions lately?

Thus, in one pre-Easter incident, when the official papal preacher, a man with no policy role at the Holy See, haplessly likened the campaign against the Vatican to “collective violence” against the Jews, these and other news organizations leaped on the remark screaming “Gotcha!” even though they routinely ignore everything else this individual says.

But merely blaming the media, however blameworthy they may be, doesn’t help. We learned that to our sorrow when the scandal erupted in the United States eight years ago. In the end, it’s the culture of secrecy that makes the Church vulnerable to unfair coverage and commentary. And for the persistence of secrecy we have ourselves to blame.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

He is risen, Alleluia!

"Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
He is not here, but he has been raised." - Luke 24:5

A happy and blessed Easter to all of you
from all of us at OSV Daily Take.

Seven Last Words

By Mary DeTurris Poust

This is my reflection on the Seven Last Words that I have posted on my own blog, Not Strictly Spiritual, on previous Good Fridays. I thought I would share it with you today:

Father forgive them, they know not what they do...

We see Jesus on the cross today and hear him forgiving his persecutors, forgiving us. It is a powerful scene, but it is more than just a scene out of our faith history. Jesus’ way is supposed to be our way. Forgive, forgive, forgive, even in the face of the most unreasonable suffering and injustice. Are we willing to forgive as Jesus did?

Today you will be with me in Paradise.

The “good thief” has always been a favorite of mine. Imagine in your last dying moment that you utter a few kind words and are assured by Jesus himself that you will be in heaven with him that day. It would be nice to assume that in that situation I would have taken the path of belief, like the good thief, but there is a much bigger part of me that probably would have been like the unrepentant thief, expecting mercy and miracles despite faithlessness.

Woman, behold your son...

At last a comfort in the midst of all this misery. God gives us a mother for all time. He reminds us that his mother is our mother, who, with a mother’s unconditional love, will open her arms to us when we are desperate, when we are hurting, when we are searching for peace and a way back to the Father.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Despair, despair. If Jesus can feel despair, what hope is there for me? Then again, Jesus’ moment of despair reminds me of his humanness and that gives me hope even in this dark moment. God became man, walked on earth, suffered torture and death beyond our comprehension. My God is fully human and fully divine. My God knows what it means to live this earthly life, and so my God knows my small sufferings and heartaches and will not turn His back on me.

I thirst.

The wretched physical anguish of the Crucifixion is coming to bear. It is almost too much for us to take. Jesus, water poured out for the world, thirsts. And yet in the midst of this suffering, we remember Jesus’ words to the woman at the well, the woman to whom he first revealed his identity: “...whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.” (John 4:14)

It is finished.

Jesus has completed his mission of redemption. Darkness descends, the earth shakes, the temple curtain tears in two. We see Jesus’ anguish near its end. We should be reduced to trembling at the enormity of his suffering, his gift to us. Unlike his followers who were plunged into fear and despair at this moment, we have the benefit of hindsight. We know what is coming. We know that his Crucifixion was cause for our salvation. His death a victory. His earthly end our eternal beginning.

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

Jesus is going back to the Father, back to where he started before time began, but he will not leave us orphans. We patiently wait to celebrate his Resurrection, to rejoice in our unearned windfall. We wait, pray, watch, listen -- hopeful, trusting, faithful. We begin our vigil now, waiting for the darkness to turn to light.

Top 10 OSV Newsweekly stories in March 2010

Here are the OSV Newsweekly stories that drew the most web traffic in March 2010:

1. How parish websites can better connect with Catholics

2. Hundred U.S. Anglican parishes make first step towards becoming Catholic

3. Editorial: Should the pope resign?

4. DC same-sex marriage forces Church out of adoption service

5. Is new Vatican commission a good — or bad — sign for Medjugorje authenticity?

6. Editorial: Keeping Catholic. Are parishes' priorities in the right place?

7. Editorial: Ideological blindness in health care debate brings awful ironies

8. In Focus: Definitive Catholic guide to Holy Week

9. Amid soaring unemployment, Catholic career counselor offers tips for finding work

10. Wounded veteran finds healing in Church; becomes Catholic at Easter

Should the pope resign?

No.

Most media reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of the clerical sex abuse crisis — as pope, previously as head of the Vatican office tasked with investigating such crimes, and even earlier as archbishop of Munich, Germany — have got it plain wrong, as the senseless speculation about whether the pope will resign proves.

Far from being complicit in clerical sex abuse or its cover-up, Pope Benedict has been a key figure in getting the Vatican aggressively involved in addressing the scandal and rooting out what he called the “filth” in the Church. He was the first to move against Legionary of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, and to impose canonical sanctions on him. He was the first to summon an entire bishops’ conference — Ireland’s — to take action at a national level.

And yet he is being “scourged at the pillar” in the world press, as New York’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan puts it. Columnists have called him a “grisly little man” and “sin-crazed ‘Rottweiler.’” A recent political cartoon shows him distributing “pederast pervert passes” to a line of priests who then run straight into a crowd of young boys. A homosexual activist group is calling for him to be arrested when he visits Britain later this year.

There are two things to distinguish here. First, the allegations of clerical sex abuse that have cropped up across Europe must be addressed swiftly, openly and fairly. For Catholic Americans, there is understandably a painful sense of déjà vu because the clerical sex abuse crisis broke here almost a decade ago. But the Church’s efforts here have paid off: Accusations of sexual abuse have slowed; new leaders have emerged, and new policies have been crafted that are now a model for other organizations.

It is quite another thing to seek to scapegoat the pope.

The journalistic herd has now jumped on the resignation bandwagon, with superficial reporting that ignores both the facts and the context.

There are many agendas at work, and while we do not claim that there is a vast conspiracy behind this media barrage, it is useful to point out that a lot of people do not mind the Church being put in a defensive position: Catholics angry at Church leaders; interest groups who oppose Church teachings on a variety of topics; journalists treating the Church like any other corporation and wanting to topple the guy at the top.

Ringing, and useless, calls for a papal resignation ignore the boring facts of the latest round of scandals, and they will not be taken seriously by the pope himself or members of the hierarchy. Nor should they be taken seriously by us.

They do, however, have an impact. Ordinary, good-hearted Catholics — most of whom get the bulk of their news about the Church from the secular media — are dismayed and defensive.

For them, we urge reading the pope’s letter to the Irish people on the sexual abuse crisis there (tinyurl.com/yccjthh), and to see it as his advice to us as well.

First, apologize from the heart. We must acknowledge, and never forget, the pain of those who were abused.

Second, the pope urges us to devote our Friday penances for one year, from now until Easter 2011, for the healing and renewal of the Church. On Fridays we should all offer our fasting, our abstinence, our prayer and works of mercy for this intention.

Third, we should pay particular attention to Eucharistic adoration, praying in the presence of the Lord for a renewed sense of mission on the part of our leaders and ourselves.

At the end of the day, this crisis has always been profoundly spiritual. The New York Times may never understand that fact, but Pope Benedict most certainly does.

This editorial appears in the April 11 issue of OSV Newsweekly, America's No. 1 national Catholic newspaper.