Coming on the heels of the open defiance of a number of his priests against the Church’s support for a law banning same-sex marriage in Minnesota, maybe Archbishop Harry Flynn would like to know about a rally at a local parish to discuss the amendment. I bet that would make him feel better. Oh wait, my bad: the March 20 event at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Minneapolis is sponsored by the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities and opposes the protection of marriage and wants same-sex marriage legalized.
Maybe when the archbishop’s done cracking down on priests who oppose “safe environment sex education” programs, he can do something about priests who openly dissent from the Church’s teaching on sexuality and mislead the people.
Technorati Tags: dissent, doctrine, heterodoxy, homosexuality, Minneapolis
Just sent a email to the communicatons email address from the diocese asking if the archdiocese supports this and if the pastor of St. Thomas is going to take the time to console the 2 GLBT Catholic couples on the teachings of the Catechism.
I am not seriously thinking I will receive a honest response.
I guess the papal nuncio in the US must receive mail by the truckload on these issues.
Didn’t you get the memo Dom?
Flynn is a warrior for the Church. He reacts to any sort of hanky panky without fear or favor and is always fair.
This is all the fault of the Dan O’Connell Society. They’re the real danger here. Oh…..and mean conservative “terrorists” in general.
Trust me. Flynn will fix all this.
Gerald, good point. But then again maybe that is why there is such a movement afoot to change who can be a priest.
“The worst wolves in sheep’s clothing are the heretics and then, bad prelates.”
If the faith is endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly.”
St. Thomas Aquinas
Y’know, even Jesus kept his “friends close and [his] enemies closer” . . . Abp Flynn oughta buy a clue. (But like the other stuck-in-the-‘70’s-in-their-70s bishops, he won’t.)
(I’m assuming he’s older than my dad. That’s downright embarrassing if he’s not. What, he doesn’t even have the excuse of having been in the seminary in the late ‘50’s???)
Again I think the point has been made before – the problem with many of the Vatican II bishops ie those who got swept up in the Spirit of the Council is that they lost the courage to confront. To give an apposite historical example – in 1880 the NSW government passed the Public Instruction Act which withheld funding from all schools which did not conform to the Dept of Education mandates (up until then the government paid for all schools, public and denominational). Bishop Matthew Quinn led the other bishops in rejecting state funding despite the enormous cost to Catholics and the Church rather than allow the state to dictate to the Church. Too many of yesterday’s bishops who are still around are scared to stand out or be pilloried in the press. Archbishop Quinn knows if he comes down hard on scandals like St Thomas it will be all over the press and he will be made to look like Ghengis Khan or Adolf Hitler. If he rebukes a faithful priest however he knows 1) the priest will obey 2) the press won’t even mention it. What we need are bishop’s of courage who don’t mind being ridiculed for Christ’s sake. But I guess that’s not likely in this case.
I do understand where Flynn and even Doaln are coming from. They were of the same generation. They saw the Church suddenyl “popular” and “accepted” after centuries of outright discrimination. many of them were infected with a belief similar to the 19th century radical leftist jews who felt Jews themselves were responsible for their oppression by “being different” so they HAD to be the same .. only more so .. to stay accepted. To expect them to turn around now and embrace the ghetto as the price of faithfulness to the Gospel is too much. But the analogy runs deeper. The Jews of Germany were so infected with this belief that they were in deep denial that the Nazi’s would really do all they said. Their reaction to the persecution of the first five years of Nazi rule was “keep your hed down and it will all blow over”. Conforming didn’t save the Jews and it hasn’t saved the Church from persecution. But too many just can’t bring themselves to fight back. Flynn will put in good men quietly but will hide from a direct and public (and it would be very public given the press hatred of the Church) confrontation. But the fires of persecution make the faith burn brighter. Look at O’Malley .. will he nill he he has been thrust forward to champion the Church by refusing to bow to the state on gay adoptions, Chaput, Bourke, and others who reject automatic communion for pollies who support abortion are showing the way. The progressive experiment is failing and its exponents flailing. Much as those of us who have suffered through this Babylonian captivity might wish to smite our enemies hip and thigh we must be patient and await God’s judgement not ours. It is coming.
While I understand your frustration, what do you actually know about Flynn’s reasons/motives in requesting that Fr. Altier not publish his homilies on the web?
Um, Flynn’s spokesman said that was the reason.
Hey, all I’m doing is asking Flynn to reconcile his actions against Altier with his lack of action against priests like the 28 who openly defy Church teaching on marriage and homosexuality or the ones at St. Joan of Arc parish or the priest who sits on the board of Dignity USA, and on and on.
Asking for explanation of what is scandalizing to your faith is not lack of charity. If I ascribed personal malfeasance to his actions, that would be a lack of charity.
I can’t know what the archbishop believes. I can see what he does. That is the only accurate measure I have and in the end is all that really matters. And after all, if people in his chancery are actively subverting him and/or the Gospel, why doesn’t he do something about it? He is the archbishop, after all.
If only those stupid laypeople and orthodox priests would shut up and just trust the bishops. What right do they have to impute bad motives to them? After all, bishops only do what is right and holy all the time. They’ve never done anything, especially anything revealed in the past four years, that would give laypeople even the tiniest bit of cause to lose trust that their only motive is what’s good all of God’s children.
And stop pestering the bishop to discipline bad priests. It’s not like he can remove them from their parishes or publicly announce that they are speaking error and thus remove doubt from the minds of the faithful. A bishop is powerless to teach, sanctify, and govern his diocese unless dissenting priests allow him to.
Okay, the sarcasm may be snarky, but the point remains.
If I may be pedantic for a moment: VOTF is not a survivor’s group.
Can. 212 §1. Conscious of their own responsibility, the Christian faithful are bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church.
§2. The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.
§3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.
I have made no ad hominem attacks on the archbishop. I have made observations about actions that raise questions about his fairness. He has taken punitive action against an apparently orthodox priest while many demonstrably heterodox dissenting (and very vocal) priests go unchallenged. That’s a very serious matter and one worthy of noticing.
Private letters to bishops are all well and good, but look where private letters to bishops have gotten us. The evidence boxes in dozens of pervert-priest lawsuits are filled with nice polite letters to bishops complaining about Fr. So-and-so’s predations, accompanied by nice reply letters promising everything and doing nothing.
In other words, private correspondence is fine, but many of the bishops themselves (including some of those in office now) have shown that unless their actions are exposed to public scrutiny nothing will happen.