Tuesday, November 12, 2002
You’ve got a majority; use it while you can

Trent Lott says to bank on his promise that a partial-birth abortion ban will be passed this year. But the White House is sounding a cautious note, warning social conservatices, i.e. pro-lifers, not to push too hard too quickly so that it doesn’t look like a fringe element has taken control of the federal government.

It’s not clear, however, how much leeway conservatives will give Bush. “This Republican Congress was elected because of the pro-life vote, and they need to heed that vote,” said Ken Connor, head of the Family Research Council. “We know the abortion issue was the number two issue that prompted voter turnout in Minnesota, the number three issue in Missouri, and we know 76 percent of self-identified religious conservatives in Georgia voted for Saxby Chambliss. In no small part, the favorable outcome of this election for Republicans is a consequence of motivated pro-life voters who turned out to the polls.”

In most exit polls that finally filtered in after the election, a lot of voters listed pro-life as a big issue for them. And look at the batting average for NOW and the National Abortion Rights Action League when they made abortion a big issue in supporting certain candidates. I think something like 85 or 90 percent of them lost.

So what’s at stake? It’s not just the ban on partial-birth abortions:

Next on the list of House-passed measures come the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (giving legal status to a fetus hurt or killed during the commission of a federal crime), the Child Custody Protection Act (making it a crime to take a minor for an out-of-state abortion in violation of a state’s parental notification laws), and the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (forbidding state and local government actions against hospitals or health-care workers who refuse to participate in abortions).

All of that passed the House this year and could be passed by the Senate before the end of this term. Then there is the potential appointment of pro-life federal judges. A lot could be accomplished, but not if we’re too timid to use the opportunity that we have before us.

We have perhaps two years with a pro-life majority in Congress and a pro-life president. If not now, when?

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Divorced from reality

Bear with me on this one, but I’m going to think out loud for a bit.

It seems to me that the Church’s teaching on divorce is really a teaching on infidelity. In other words, people who receive a civil divorce, but not a Church annulment should not enter into new romantic relationships. But a divorce itself is not a sinful act.

I looked at the Catechism, 1650-1651, and it quotes Christ’s words: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and is she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10-11-12) [emphasis added] Note that it is the divorce and remarriage that is the problem. I’ll grant that divorce is not a good thing and should be considered a last resort, but in some cases good people can end up in divorce for whatever reason-- infidelity of the spouse, abuse, et al.

The problem, as I see it, is that a stigma has been attached to divorced people in some circles and saddens me to hear divorced people-- who have not remarried-- tell me that they don’t go to Communion becuase of a mistaken notion that they sinned by divorcing.

What do you all think?

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Don’t expect much

Just a word of caution to people: don’t expect much from the US bishops’ meeting in DC this week. For those who are not used to observing the bishops’ conference at work, the Dallas meeting was unusual. They’re more likely to spend their week debating minutiae ("Where should that comma go?") and issuing politically liberal documents ("We think undocumented aliens who entered this country illegally and don’t pay taxes should be given access to more benefits than the average American receives every year.") than dealing with momentous matters.

To my mind the bishops’ conference is like the Congress: the less paperwork it actually generates, the better it is for everybody.

As for the debate over the revised Dallas norms, I expect there to be an up or down vote with the vast majority voting in favor. End of story, thanks for coming. All those people down in Washington hoping to testify before the bishops should realize that the June meeting was their only shot at influential lobbying.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, November 11, 2002
More outrageousness

From the Dallas Morning News (courtesy of Amy Welborn):

One of the Dallas Catholic Diocese’s most prominent priests has remained on duty for several months despite an accusation that he grabbed the genitals of a worshipper who had asked him for help, correspondence and interviews show.

The case raises questions about whether the diocese is following its sexual misconduct policies, which were toughened in the wake of clergy abuse scandals that cost more than $30 million in legal settlements. It has also exposed deep divisions between Bishop Charles Grahmann and the man named as his apparent successor nearly three years ago.

Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Galante, one of the nation’s most outspoken prelates on abuse issues, said he has been unable to persuade Bishop Grahmann to remove the Rev. Ramon Alvarez as head priest of the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

That raises the question of what exactly a coadjutor bishop can do? Is he no more than an auxiliary bishop who’s been named as the soon-to-be successor to the ordinary?

The allegations against the priest surfaced in May, when a 58-year-old man told the diocese that Father Alvarez had assaulted him on a Sunday night in 1991. Garland Melancon said he was visiting Dallas and suffering severe back pain when the priest agreed to perform a pain-relief blessing, then pulled down his jogging pants, groped him and propositioned him.

At which time the victim should have performed a “pain-infliction blessing” on the pervert.

Father Alvarez acknowledged “inappropriate contact” with the Houston-area man and was told to resume counseling about “boundary issues” that he’d previously undergone voluntarily, diocesan Chancellor Mary Edlund said. She characterized the encounter as consensual but would not discuss details. No civil or criminal charges have been filed; the legal deadline for doing so may have passed.

How’s this for a boundary: “Keep your hands out of other people’s
pants. Since you’ve shown you can’t do so, you’re gone.” Does it really matter whether it was consensual from a bishop’s point of view. If a priest misuses his office-- someone coming to him for ministry-- to get sexual gratification, I think it’s pretty clear he shouldn’t be a pastor or cathedral rector. Maybe there’s some nice quiet nursing home that needs a chaplain. At best. At worst, the guy should be laicized for committing the crime of sexual assault.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Shepherds and administrators

Bishop Wilton Gregory’s address to the US bishops’ meeting going on in DC is online. There’s some good stuff there, but something he said struck me funny.

In his address to the USCCB, Bishop Gregory speaks of the threefold duty of the bishop: to teach, sanctify and govern. So far, so good.

Then he talks about how bishops (should) function:

• as teachers...
• as sanctifiers...
• and-- get this-- “as administrators of the Church...” [emphasis in original]

If you’re not struck by the difference between government and administration, you too might be a bishop someday.

It strikes me as typical of how a political liberal sees the function of government. The bureaucracy/apparatchiks are the foundation: “Government of the bureaucrats by the administrators for the unwashed masses.” I would rather my bishop not see himself as an administrator of the Church, but as a shepherd and apostle. I’m pretty sure Pope John Paul doesn’t see himself as an administrator, which, come to think of it, may be why he gets so much criticism for letting “bad” bishops stay in their dioceses.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Bureaucracy wins?

Notorious heterodox Catholic columnist Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald has a column today about a woman’s dying wish to vote. The column starts with a non-sequitir, yet obligatory, swipe at the Church. I can’t for the life of me understand what it has to do with the point of the story, except that maybe the guy leading protests outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross each Sunday (and I’ve described before how outrageous those protests have become) is a forceful person.

As for my take on the point of Egan’s column-- arbitrary rules prevented a dying woman from voting because she asked for an absentee ballot too late-- I think rules are there to follow. Just because some sleazebags in government have broken the law and got away with it, doesn’t mean that laws are there to dispense with as we wish. If Secretary of State Bill Galvin had overruled the law, he could have faced criminal fines.

I guess it’s the same argument as those who want to dispense with the Church’s teachings on sexual morality since nobody lives by them anyway. When the rules are inconvenient, change the rules.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Priests vs Victims

A wire service story paints a picture of the scene at the US bishops meeting in Washington, DC, this week. The primary point is that victims and “reform” groups are upset by the Vatican revisions to the Dallas policy:

Since June, attention has shifted from a focus on helping victims to preserving priests’ rights, prompted by criticism that the bishops’ original plan violated due process under church law.

They state it as if there is an opposition. The underlying tone suggests that all priests are guilty. How about we rephrase it as victims’ rights and the rights of the accused. Not every priest who is accused is guilty and isn’t a falsely accused priest a victim, too?

This is where the hostility toward the Church by the media and by heterodox reform groups begins to enter. To them the priesthood is the enemy and there are some who would like to see it stripped of any prominence so that it has no special significance in the Church. And it was the negligent bishops who provided the ammunition for these anti-clericalists by allowing the Scandal to take root and giving the appearance that priests get a free pass to commit unspeakable sins.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Prayers please

My good friend Mary Jo Sheehan lost her father over the weekend. I know it would mean a lot to her if each of my visitors could stop for a moment and say a prayer for the repose of his soul and for his grieving family. Thank you.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

A higher standard

An op-ed in the LA Times says the Vatican “blinked in the face of evil”, referring to the revisions to the Dallas policy. It’s a ridiculous screed that makes outrageous claims.

For instance, the author calls the Code of Canon Law “an archaic standard of justice.” On the one hand, it’s hardly archaic since it was completely revised and updated in 1983. The US Constitution is centuries older than that; is too archaic? Of course, canon law’s roots go back much further, to the law of ancient Rome, but then so does US law, taking detours through old England and ancient Greece.

The author faults the revisions to the Dallas policy, saying they “gut the intent of the get tough policy”:

Among other things, the group emphasized priests’ rights of presumed innocence, and it clarified the definition of sexual abuse.

Good Lord! A presumption of innocence? A clarified definition of the crime? The barbarians! How dare they provide a system of justice on par with that of the civil courts?! Ironically, how many of these same people were crying out about Bill Clinton’s presumption of innocence when his own misdeeds in office were clear? He also brings up the 10-year statute of limitations. Don’t most states have a statute of limitations? Isn’t there a logical reason for it-- namely that evidence and eyewitness accounts lose their potency with the passage of time, that proving the case becomes more difficult, not less. At some point, a fair investigation of the accusations cannot be done.

The writer also complains that the lay review boards have been “emasculated” and reduced to advisory status. They never had any more status than that. No one but the local ordinary and the Pope has the authority to discipline a priest and no review board, whether full of lay people or clergy was going to be able to strip a priest of his ministry or priestly faculties. The new language is just a clarification of that reality. A priest functions as an extension of the bishop and it is only the bishop who can strip him of that.

The writer goes on and on, citing what he says are examples that the Vatican’s system of secret tribunals and investigations is the problem and that the “brave” US bishops tried to fix the system, but won’t be allowed to by the “oppressive” Vatican curia. Incidentally, many of the same US bishops are the same ones who allowed the abusers to remain in ministry. They had the means to deal with abusers years ago and still do. The Dallas policy is no more than an attempt to mollify critics and set up a system by which some bishops can say, “Stop me before I allow a pedophile to abuse again.”

By the way, this line was priceless: “For years, the Vatican tried to reduce the power of national bishops’ conferences as the American hierarchy issued visionary pastoral letters on nuclear arms and economic ethics.” Visionary? I don’t think so. Perhaps, if the bishops spent as much time and energy on evangelization, catchesis, and sexual morality, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sunday, November 10, 2002
That’s the point

The Boston Herald in a Sunday editorial criticizes the Vatican changes to the Dallas policy. Specifically, it challenges the change from requiring reporting of all cases of abuse to police to just stating that the dioceses should obey the law of the particular place they are in. So if a state does not mandate reporting abuse by clergy then the bishop could just deal with it in house and make no report.

Sexual abuse of minors is a crime in almost all cultures. Priests are not exempt from the criminal law anywhere in the United States. Failure to report internally convicted offenders to the authorities is, whether particular states require it or not or make it punishable or not, the concealment of crime.

If parents lose confidence in the church procedures, they will ignore them and go directly to police. The church may often find its cherished procedures bypassed, and priests jailed and put on trial by the civil authorities.

The Herald doesn’t get it. Parents should report the crime to civil authorities and a sexual abuser should go to jail. It shouldn’t be left up to the bishop to report it; the parents or the victim should be doing it in the first place.

Perhaps the Vatican recognizes that there could conceivably be circumstances in which the victim doesn’t want the abuse reported. In fact, we’ve heard of cases where the victim told the bishop not to report the crime, but only to ensure that the man can no longer practice as a priest. (Admittedly, I don’t agree with this. Anyone who rapes kids should be behind bars.)

But the fact remains is that people are still relying on the idea that the Church thinks its law is above civil law in this realm. No, it is complementary. The canonical procedures only determines whether the priest should remain a priest and in ministry. The civil courts should still be putting the guilty behind bars to protect society. Even if the guy gets his collar yanked, he’s still living in your neighborhood. It’s up to all of us to ensure that the guy gets put someplace he can’t hurt anyone else.

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Irony in denim

Levi’s has a new commercial for their Wrangler jeans which shows an American flag waving and the soundtrack is an old Sixties song. The lyric goes like this: “Some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooh, the red, white, and blue...” I suppose it’s meant to tap into the patriotic spirit in America today and to equate it with Levi’s as an old American tradition.

Unfortunately, the next lyric of the song (which isn’t included in the ad) is “Not me, not me.” See, it’s a protest song and was sung as an “anti-patriotic” song. “Some people are patriotic and love their country, but not me, so don’t send me to fight in Vietnam,” was the sentiment. Do you think any of the Boomers at Levi’s and their ad agency thought about what the song meant before using it? Was it a subtle dig at the current wave of patriotism? Or did they just fail to remember (or listen to) the whole song?

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Divisiveness at home

The split in the Church over Voice of the Faithful and the Scandal has hit my parish. Specifically, there was an opinion column in our local newspaper The Salem Evening news on Friday from a parishioner, or should I say former parishioner.

My response to it is right here(I’m also sending it to the newspaper for publication). I will post his article in its entirety at the “More...” link below since only paid subscribers can read it on the newspaper’s web site. Please go read his column first and then come back to read my response.

---

My heart goes out to Brendan Walsh (Viewpoint, Nov. 8) whose faith seems to be in crisis because of the clergy abuse scandals. However, his reaction to his pastor’s decision not to allow the lay group Voice of the Faithful to meet in his parish seems to be overstated.

I won’t presume to speak for Fr. Timothy Murphy, the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, but I will say that Fr. Murphy would never tell Brendan that he “didn’t know much about” Voice of the Faithful (VOTF). Fr. Murphy and I have had several discussions about VOTF on occasions preceding Brendan’s lunch with him and we both agreed then that the group is divisive precisely because it attempts to “run the ideological gamut.”

Beng the member of a church, particularly the Catholic Church, is not like being a member of a political party. People of good will can disagree on policy decisions and how best to govern a nation or state or city. But being a member of a church has one tenet: what is God’s will and what is our response to it? On the most important issues, there can be one answer and one alone. For example, is it God’s will that unborn children have an inherent right to life? We can’t agree to disagree, because if that child does have that right, then it would be inhuman to allow it, to turn our backs on it. So how do we determine God’s will? As Christians, we believe that God gave us His Word, both written and oral, which has been handed down to us over the centuries, and as Catholics we believe that the Holy Spirit guides his bishops, in union with the Pope, in interpreting that Word for us today.

That’s the short form. The problem is that any authentic grassroots group of Catholics has to start by acknowledging that fidelity to the teachings of the Church is essential. We don’t have an ideological gamut in the Church; there is orthodoxy (Greek for “correct belief") and heterodoxy. ("wrong belief").

Now VOTF claims that it counsels adherence to the Church’s teachings. Yet, even today you can go to its web site (http://www.votf.org/Educating_Ourselves/massimini.html) and find recommended reading that contradicts Church teaching on abortion, contraception, sexual morality, who can receive which sacraments, and so on. We find no recommended reading that counsels adherence to Church teaching. This is what makes VOTF divisive. The group offers vague assurances that it only wants to “promote structural change” in the Church, yet never offers what that means.

As for Brendan’s recollection of a Salem priest once having lunch with a member of the American Nazi Party, I wonder the purpose of that anecdote. Perhaps the priest was trying to effect a change of heart in the man. Even Jesus broke bread with the prostitutes and tax collectors. I recall the Pharisees chastized even him for that. And even if that priest of long ago had some sympathies for the Nazi, how do we know he was not punished? Brendan admits he doesn’t know, yet assumes he wasn’t. Now who’s being divisive?

Brendan asks why Cardinal Bernard Law, who he says aided and abetted criminal behavior, has the right to tell a parish who can use the parish hall. Because he’s the bishop and whatever mistakes he’s made in the past, it doesn’t invalidate his responsibility to safeguard his flock from that which would separate them from Christ now.

Brendan wonders what he’ll do on Sundays now that he doesn’t feel like a part of his own parish. I hope he will pray and ask for God’s guidance. Maybe he’ll find a new parish that is to his liking. That’s the beauty of the Catholic Church, that every parish is still part of the same family of God and every Mass a partaking of the same sacrifice of Christ. And on Sundays, I hope all of the family of Immaculate Conception Parish that Brendan has left behind will pray for him, too, that he will find the answers he seeks.

Read the rest of the blog entry...

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Saturday, November 09, 2002
Central Casting

The Kairos Guy shows a picture of John Muhammad entering a court room and asks if there’s any doubt Denzel Washington will be playing him in the movie. No, no, Denzel will be playing the heroic Chief Moose. Muhammad will be played by Samuel L. Jackson (or one of the Wayans brothers).

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Priceless

This is from a column by Peter Gelzinis in the Boston Herald from April. A friend just sent it to me; I must have missed it when it first ran, but it’s a priceless exposition of how I would have reacted in the same circumstance. Unfortunately, it’s also a clear example of how some of the bishops clearly gave preferential treatment to priests, despite stark evidence of their wrongdoing.

“No only did (Shanley) know what I was doing, and how I felt about him,” Jackie Gauvreau said recently, “he even tried to have me arrested. But that doesn’t begin to explain how insidious this guy was.

“During a vigil Mass once, we came to the Kiss of Peace,’’ she recalled, “and he actually approached me . . . to kiss me. I looked him right in the eye and said, ‘If you touch me, I’ll knock you on your ass.’ And he knew I would, too.”

Jackie was the woman mentioned in the following excerpt from Bishop Daily’s deposition:

Macleish: You wrote back to Paul Shanley and the copy is hard to read but I think I can make it out. But did you not say, “Dear Paul: I’m sorry to learn of the harassment you suffered from a woman in Brockton by constant telephone calls. As Father Ryan suggested, I’m not so sure a restraining order would be helpful. For us here at the chancery office, we stopped harassing calls like
that from the use of the”—I can’t read that.

Daily: “Tape.”

Macleish: “From the use of the tape.” What did you mean by that?

Daily: The call would come in and the person would leave their message or whatever they wanted to say, short or long, on the tape.

Macleish: “It is rather an impersonal situation but we feel it does screen out calls that are from demented people and people we cannot help over the phone. The other recourse is not to speak at all when she calls but merely to leave her hanging until she hopefully gets discouraged.” Are those your
words?

Daily: That’s in my letter, yes.

Macleish: “If you wish to pursue the legal matter, let me know.” Then it says “With Best personal regards for a happy holy Christmas and New Year’s. Sincerely, Christ Most Reverand Thomas B. Daily.”

Now back to Jackie:

After several months passed with no response, Gauvreau approached Law again, this time when he officiated at a Mass at Our Lady Help of Christians parish in Newton, which she joined after her anger at Shanley drove her to leave St. John’s. (St. John’s has since been closed, and the two parishes have been combined at Our Lady.)

“I said, ‘Excuse me, but do you remember I told you Paul Shanley molested a 15-year-old boy?’ Have you done anything about it?’’’ she recalled saying. ‘’And he said, ‘I want you to call my bishops. That’s why I have them.’”

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Must See TV

I think I watch a lot of TV, but I do it in big chunks, not over a lot of time. See, I have a TiVO which automatically records all my regular shows so that I can sit down whenever and watch them. It’s so good that I don’t have to think about when a show is on. Friends want to go out Thursday night? No problem, I’ll watch Survivor on Friday night. the TiVO will automatically record it. Going out on Sunday afternoon? No problem, I’ll watch the football game Sunday night.

So what do I watch? I know you’re all dying to find out. I’m going to list the shows partly to inform myself of what I’m watching. I’ll list them by weekday, even though, as I’ve said, I don’t often watch the shows on the same day:

Sunday
• Football or NASCAR (depending on the season)
• Andromeda
• Trading Spaces

  Monday

• Stargate SG-1
• CSI:Miami

  Tuesday

• According to Jim
• 24

  Wednesday

• Enterprise
• Good Eats (FoodTV)
• Fresh Gear (TechTV)

  Thursday

• Survivor
• CSI
• Without a Trace

  Friday

• Firefly

  Saturday

• The Agency

There are certain shows I let the TiVO record whenever they’re on, but I don’t watch every episode:

• The ScreenSavers (TechTV)
• The Simpsons
• The Drew Carey Show
• Star Trek (the other series)
• The Saturday morning HGTV home improvement bloc

(0) Trackbacks • Permalink