2010 News Central, Items of Interest

Church in Its Worst Credibility Crisis Since the Reformation, Theologian Tells Bishops
by HANS KÜNG
The Irish Times
April 16, 2010
 
Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops
 

Hans Kung
 
VENERABLE BISHOPS,
 
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.
 
I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:
 
Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.
 
Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.
 
The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.
 
Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.
 
Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.
 
Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.
 
Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.
 
Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.
 
This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:
 
He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).
 
He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.
 
He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.
 
He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.
 
Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.
 
I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.
 
You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!
 
And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.
 
There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.
 
The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.
 
1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!
 
2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.
 
3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.
 
4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.
 
5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:
 
6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.
 
With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.
 
With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,
Yours,
Hans Küng
 
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0416/1224268443283.html

In repy to Hans Kung:
 
An Open Letter to Hans Küng
Apr 21, 2010
George Weigel 
 
Dr. Küng:

A decade and a half ago, a former colleague of yours among the younger progressive theologians at Vatican II told me of a friendly warning he had given you at the beginning of the Council’s second session. As this distinguished biblical scholar and proponent of Christian-Jewish reconciliation remembered those heady days, you had taken to driving around Rome in a fire-engine red Mercedes convertible, which your friend presumed had been one fruit of the commercial success of your book, The Council: Reform and Reunion.
 

George Weigel

This automotive display struck your colleague as imprudent and unnecessarily self-advertising, given that some of your more adventurous opinions, and your talent for what would later be called the sound-bite, were already raising eyebrows and hackles in the Roman Curia. So, as the story was told me, your friend called you aside one day and said, using a French term you both understood, “Hans, you are becoming too evident.”

As the man who single-handedly invented a new global personality-type—the dissident theologian as international media star—you were not, I take it, overly distressed by your friend’s warning. In 1963, you were already determined to cut a singular path for yourself, and you were media-savvy enough to know that a world press obsessed with the man-bites-dog story of the dissenting priest-theologian would give you a megaphone for your views. You were, I take it, unhappy with the late John Paul II for trying to dismantle that story-line by removing your ecclesiastical mandate to teach as a professor of Catholic theology; your subsequent, snarling put-down of Karol Wojtyla’s alleged intellectual inferiority in one volume of your memoirs ranked, until recently, as the low-point of a polemical career in which you have become most evident as a man who can concede little intelligence, decency, or good will in his opponents.

I say “until recently,” however, because your April 16 open letter to the world’s bishops, which I first read in the Irish Times, set new standards for that distinctive form of hatred known as odium theologicum and for mean-spirited condemnation of an old friend who had, on his rise to the papacy, been generous to you while encouraging aspects of your current work.

Before we get to your assault on the integrity of Pope Benedict XVI, however, permit me to observe that your article makes it painfully clear that you have not been paying much attention to the matters on which you pronounce with an air of infallible self-assurance that would bring a blush to the cheek of Pius IX.

You seem blithely indifferent to the doctrinal chaos besetting much of European and North American Protestantism, which has created circumstances in which theologically serious ecumenical dialogue has become gravely imperiled.

You take the most rabid of the Pius XII-baiters at face value, evidently unaware that the weight of recent scholarship is shifting the debate in favor of Pius' courage in defense of European Jewry (whatever one may think of his exercise of prudence).

You misrepresent the effects of Benedict XVI’s 2006 Regensburg Lecture, which you dismiss as having “caricatured” Islam. In fact, the Regensburg Lecture refocused the Catholic-Islamic dialogue on the two issues that complex conversation urgently needs to engage—religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by reason, and the separation of religious and political authority in the twenty-first century state.

You display no comprehension of what actually prevents HIV/AIDS in Africa, and you cling to the tattered myth of “overpopulation” at a moment when fertility rates are dropping around the globe and Europe is entering a demographic winter of its own conscious creation.

You seem oblivious to the scientific evidence underwriting the Church’s defense of the moral status of the human embryo, while falsely charging that the Catholic Church opposes stem-cell research.

Why do you not know these things? You are an obviously intelligent man; you once did groundbreaking work in ecumenical theology. What has happened to you?

What has happened, I suggest, is that you have lost the argument over the meaning and the proper hermeneutics of Vatican II. That explains why you relentlessly pursue your fifty-year quest for a liberal Protestant Catholicism, at precisely the moment when the liberal Protestant project is collapsing from its inherent theological incoherence. And that is why you have now engaged in a vicious smear of another former Vatican II colleague, Joseph Ratzinger. Before addressing that smear, permit me to continue briefly on the hermeneutics of the Council.

While you are not the most theologically accomplished exponent of what Benedict XVI called the “hermeneutics of rupture” in his Christmas 2005 address to the Roman Curia, you are, without doubt, the most internationally visible member of that aging group which continues to argue that the period 1962–1965 marked a decisive trapgate in the history of the Catholic Church: the moment of a new beginning, in which Tradition would be dethroned from its accustomed place as a primary source of theological reflection, to be replaced by a Christianity that increasingly let “the world” set the Church’s agenda (as a motto of the World Council of Churches then put it).

The struggle between this interpretation of the Council, and that advanced by Council fathers like Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, split the post-conciliar Catholic theological world into warring factions with contending journals: Concilium for you and your progressive colleagues, Communio for those you continue to call “reactionaries.” That the Concilium project became ever more implausible over time—and that a younger generation of theologians, especially in North America, gravitated toward the Communio orbit—could not have been a happy experience for you. And that the Communio project should have decisively shaped the deliberations of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, called by John Paul II to celebrate Vatican II’s achievements and assess its full implementation on the twentieth anniversary of its conclusion, must have been another blow.

Yet I venture to guess that the iron really entered your soul when, on December 22, 2005, the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI—the man whose appointment to the theological faculty at Tübingen you had once helped arrange—addressed the Roman Curia and suggested that the argument was over: and that the conciliar “hermeneutics of reform,” which presumed continuity with the Great Tradition of the Church, had won the day over “the hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture.”

Perhaps, while you and Benedict XVI were drinking beer at Castel Gandolfo in the summer of 2005, you somehow imagined that Ratzinger had changed his mind on this central question. He obviously had not. Why you ever imagined he might accept your view of what an “ongoing renewal of the Church” would involve is, frankly, puzzling. Nor does your analysis of the contemporary Catholic situation become any more plausible when one reads, further along in your latest op-ed broadside, that recent popes have been “autocrats” against the bishops; again, one wonders whether you have been paying sufficient attention. For it seems self-evidently clear that Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have been painfully reluctant—some would say, unfortunately reluctant—to discipline bishops who have shown themselves incompetent or malfeasant and have lost the capacity to teach and lead because of that: a situation many of us hope will change, and change soon, in light of recent controversies.

In a sense, of course, none of your familiar complaints about post-conciliar Catholic life is new. It does, however, seem ever more counterintuitive for someone who truly cares about the future of the Catholic Church as a witness to God’s truth for the world’s salvation to press the line you persistently urge upon us: that a credible Catholicism will tread the same path trod in recent decades by various Protestant communities which, wittingly or not, have followed one or another version of your counsel to a adopt a hermeneutics of rupture with the Great Tradition of Christianity. Still, that is the single-minded stance you have taken since one of your colleagues worried about your becoming too evident; and as that stance has kept you evident, at least on the op-ed pages of newspapers who share your reading of Catholic tradition, I expect it’s too much to expect you to change, or even modify, your views, even if every bit of empirical evidence at hand suggests that the path you propose is the path to oblivion for the churches.

What can be expected, though, is that you comport yourself with a minimum of integrity and elementary decency in the controversies in which you engage. I understand odium theologicum as well as anyone, but I must, in all candor, tell you that you crossed a line that should not have been crossed in your recent article, when you wrote the following:

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005).

That, sir, is not true. I refuse to believe that you knew this to be false and wrote it anyway, for that would mean you had willfully condemned yourself as a liar. But on the assumption that you did not know this sentence to be a tissue of falsehoods, then you are so manifestly ignorant of how competencies over abuse cases were assigned in the Roman Curia prior to Ratzinger’s seizing control of the process and bringing it under CDF’s competence in 2001, then you have forfeited any claim to be taken seriously on this, or indeed any other matter involving the Roman Curia and the central governance of the Catholic Church.

As you perhaps do not know, I have been a vigorous, and I hope responsible, critic of the way abuse cases were (mis)handled by individual bishops and by the authorities in the Curia prior to the late 1990s, when then-Cardinal Ratzinger began to fight for a major change in the handling of these cases. (If you are interested, I refer you to my 2002 book, The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church.)

I therefore speak with some assurance of the ground on which I stand when I say that your description of Ratzinger’s role as quoted above is not only ludicrous to anyone familiar with the relevant history, but is belied by the experience of American bishops who consistently found Ratzinger thoughtful, helpful, deeply concerned about the corruption of the priesthood by a small minority of abusers, and distressed by the incompetence or malfeasance of bishops who took the promises of psychotherapy far more seriously than they ought, or lacked the moral courage to confront what had to be confronted.

I recognize that authors do not write the sometimes awful subheads that are put on op-ed pieces. Nonetheless, you authored a piece of vitriol—itself utterly unbecoming a priest, an intellectual, or a gentleman—that permitted the editors of the Irish Times to slug your article: “Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops.” That grotesque falsification of the truth perhaps demonstrates where odium theologicum can lead a man. But it is nonetheless shameful.

Permit me to suggest that you owe Pope Benedict XVI a public apology, for what, objectively speaking, is a calumny that I pray was informed in part by ignorance (if culpable ignorance). I assure you that I am committed to a thoroughgoing reform of the Roman Curia and the episcopate, projects I described at some length in God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, a copy of which, in German, I shall be happy to send you. But there is no path to true reform in the Church that does not run through the steep and narrow valley of the truth. The truth was butchered in your article in the Irish Times. And that means that you have set back the cause of reform.
 
With the assurance of my prayers,

George Weigel

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
 
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/04/an-open-letter-to-hans-kung

A Canterbury Tale
The battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops
A Reporter At Large
by Jane Kramer
The New Yorker
April 26, 2010  



Helen-Ann Hartley, an ordained priest attached to the parish of Littlemore, says, “I have had to learn to negotiate my voice of authority.” 

Remember the Church of England, that mythically placid community of Sunday Christians and beaming vicars whom you met in Austen and possibly came to loathe in Trollope? “The Tory Party at prayer,” generations of Fleet Street leader writers called it. You can forget that now. The vicar you meet today is likely to be a young woman with a couple of Oxbridge degrees, and the country’s favorite cleric is Geraldine Granger, a plump chocoholic sitcom priest known to people who watch the BBC as the Vicar of Dibley.
 
Geraldine, played by the actress Dawn French, made her début in 1994, the year that women were first ordained as priests of the Church of England. She stayed near the top of the sitcom ratings for the better part of thirteen years, which is three years longer than Tony Blair ran Britain, and continues to shepherd her parishioners through DVDs and reruns—during which time more than twenty-five hundred women have been ordained. By now, women account for nearly a third of the Church of England’s working priests, and most of them are waiting for the investiture of the Church of England’s first female bishop—a process begun in 2008, when the laity, clergy, and bishops in the Church’s governing body, the General Synod, voted in favor of removing the last vestiges of gender discrimination from canon law.
 
Not everyone is pleased. Patriarchy survives in the flock that Henry VIII appropriated from Rome in 1534, having shed a menopausal wife without benefit of the papal nod known to Catholics with connections as annulment, in order to marry Anne Boleyn, who had promised him a son a year—and was herself dispatched to the executioner’s block for producing a girl instead. And never mind that the women at issue now are priests and their problems are more professional than reproductive. It took seventeen years of wrenching Synod debate for women to be ordained, and when they were, some five hundred male priests fled in protest—two-thirds of them, as the saying goes, “to Rome.”
. . .
 
Read complete article, see here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/tm.aspx?high=&m=35236&mpage=1#35236

Dear friends,

The following article is well worth the read.  Note that majorities of weekly massgoers support women's ordination and married priests...this is an advance for the women's
ordination issue. 

with love and blessings,
~Sophie~


Catholics Critical of Pope on Abuse Issue, But See Reason for Hope
by Laurie Goodstein and Dalia Susman
The New York Times
May 5, 2010


After five years of Pope Benedict’s papacy, Catholics in the United States are estranged from the hierarchy in Rome, with most saying the Vatican is out of touch with the needs of Catholics and more than three out of four saying it is not necessary to believe in the pope’s authority to be a good Catholic. 

But they feel differently about their parish priest, with a majority saying that most priests understand Catholics’ needs and that they trust their own priest with their children. In fact, the poll suggests that for most American Catholics, the resurgence of the abuse scandal is like a far-off storm. They say it has had no effect on their Mass attendance, their financial contributions or their participation in their parishes. 

Only one in 10 Catholics now say the clergy sexual abuse issue is prompting them to consider leaving the church. That is a marked contrast from the height of the scandal in the United States, in 2002, when about one in five Catholics said they considered leaving. 

While the scandal in 2002 focused on American bishops, starting in Boston, who had failed to remove abusive priests, recent news media reports have focused on the scandal’s outbreak in Europe and on whether the Vatican and the pope are culpable. 


The Vatican and many American bishops have reacted by attacking the news media, and it appears they have struck a chord. The poll shows that slightly more Catholics believe the news media have blown the story out of proportion than those who say it has been accurately reported. Most say the news media have been harder on the Catholic Church than on other religions. Those who attend Mass regularly are even more critical of the news media. 

Many Catholic respondents indicated that they saw a change in how their church had handled the sexual abuse problem over time. A broad majority of Catholics said that in the past, the Vatican and American bishops were far more focused on covering up sexual abuse by priests than preventing it, but that now the reverse was true. 

But a majority said sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests was still going on. 

Betsy Conrath, who is 60 and a retired weather broadcaster in Spokane, Wash., said in a follow-up interview: “They are not going to cover up any more and hope and pray it will just go away. Now that the pope has a handle on it, things will change. 

“I have been totally saddened by all of this,” Ms. Conrath said, “but I’m still very much a Catholic and have not lost my faith in my religion.” 

Norbert Wellman, 71, a retiree in West Point, Iowa, who worked for a chemical company and a state prison, said: “Since the news came out and was spread around in all the newspapers, they got the idea they’re going to have to do the best they can to fix the problem. I think before, maybe, they thought it wouldn’t get out.” 

Nearly half of those polled said Benedict’s leadership of the church had been “a mixed blessing,” and only one in four said his leadership had helped the church. But his personal favorability rating is more positive than negative. Forty-three percent say they have a favorable opinion of him, and only 17 percent have an unfavorable view. Still, 38 percent express no opinion about him at all, a decidedly blank reaction to a pope who made a highly publicized trip to the United States only two years ago and has issued three encyclicals, or formal teaching letters, on morality or doctrine. The pope’s favorability rating is higher among those who attend Mass regularly: 63 percent. 

The recurrence of the sexual abuse scandal has renewed the debate among some Catholic commentators who argue that there is an underlying problem in the priesthood attributable to celibacy, homosexuality or the male-only-clergy culture. The poll shows that most Catholics are unconvinced of their arguments. Three in 10 said the celibacy requirement for Catholic priests was a major factor contributing to sexual abuse of minors, while nearly as many said it was only a minor factor and more than a third said it was not a factor. Results are similar on the question of whether homosexuality in the priesthood contributes. 

Only 17 percent said the all-male priesthood was a major factor in the abuse problem, while a majority said it was not a factor. 

Nonetheless, for more than 20 years, majorities of Catholics have consistently said they are in favor of ordaining women and married men as priests. That trend holds true today, with 6 in 10 saying they favor women’s ordination, and two-thirds favoring married priests. Even majorities of weekly churchgoers are in favor of opening the priesthood to women and married men. 

Mary Dunham, a 64-year-old quilter and crafter in Orfordville, Wis., said in a follow-up interview: “The sexual abuse issue goes back to the Vatican. They allowed it to be covered up for so long because they didn’t want the church to look bad. Had a woman been pope, she wouldn’t have allowed it. She would have strung up these guys herself.” 

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted from April 28 to May 2 with 412 Catholics. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus five percentage points.

Marjorie Connelly, Marina Stefan and Megan Thee-Brenan contributed reporting. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05poll.html

On this day May 5 in 553 – The Second Council of Constantinople, considered by many Christian churches to have been the fifth Christian Ecumenical Council, began to discuss the topics of Nestorianism and Origenism, among others.

Looking Behind the Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal
By Aidan Lewis
BBC News
May 4, 2010
 

In recent months allegations and admissions of child abuse by priests have shaken the Roman Catholic Church to its core, as a continuous stream of cases has surfaced across Western Europe and beyond. 
  


Experts say there is no evidence of a link between celibacy and abuse

The Vatican has defended itself by suggesting this is a problem that affects society as a whole, and that the Church has now taken steps to deal with it - an approach that has often provoked more anger and frustration among critics who believe it systematically covered up many cases.
 
With allegations still surfacing, there is no conclusive account of the extent of Catholic abuse worldwide or its causes.
 
But current research and expert opinion suggest that men within the Catholic Church may be no more likely than others to abuse, and that the prevalence of abuse by priests has fallen sharply in the last 20-30 years.
 
What has made the crisis stand out are the cover-ups and other alleged shortcomings in the way abuse was dealt with.
 
"The real problem is an abuse of authority, the duty of care that pastors have to their flocks," says the British historian, and former member of the Jesuit Catholic order, Michael Walsh.
 
"This has been abused and that is the greatest scandal - that's what is systemic, rather than sex abuse."
 
. . . Read the complete article, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.ashx?m=35246

On this day May 6 in 1527 –  Spanish and German troops sack Rome; some consider this the end of the Renaissance. 147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, die fighting the forces of Charles V in order to allow Pope Clement VII to escape into Castel Sant'Angelo.

On this day May 6 in 1536 – King Henry VIII orders English language Bibles be placed in every church.

On this day May 6 in 2001 – During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque.

Argument Against Women's Suffrage, in 1911.    Does any of this sound familiar? 
Prepared by J. B. Sanford, Chairmen of Democratic Caucus  

ARGUMENT AGAINST SENATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO. 8 

Suffrage is not a right. It is a privilege that may or may not be granted. Politics is no place for a women consequently the privilege should not be granted to her. 

The mother’s influence is needed in the home. She can do little good by gadding the streets and neglecting her children. Let her teach her daughters that modesty, patience, and gentleness are the charms of a women. Let her teach her sons that an honest conscience is every man’s first political law; that no splendor can rob him nor no force justify the surrender of the simplest right of a free and independent citizen. The mothers of this country can shape the destinies of the nation by keeping in their places and attending to those duties that God Almighty intended for them. The kindly, gentle influence of the mother in the home and the dignified influence of the teacher in the school will far outweigh all the influence of all the mannish female politicians on earth. 

The courageous, chivalrous, and manly men and the womanly women, the real mothers and home builders of the country, are opposed to this innovation in American political life. There was a bill (the Sanford bill) before the last legislature which proposed to leave the equal suffrage question to women to decide first before the men should vote on it. This bill was defeated by the suffragettes because they knew that the women would vote down the amendment by a vote of ten to one. 

The men are able to run the government and take care of the women. Do women have to vote in order to receive the protection of man? Why, men have gone to war, endured every privation and death itself in defense of woman. To man, woman is the dearest creature on earth, and there is no extreme to which he would not go for his mother or sister. By keeping woman in her exalted position man can be induced to do more for her than he could by having her mix up in affairs that will cause him to lose respect and regard for her. Woman does not have to vote to secure her rights. Man will go to any extreme to protect and elevate her now. As long as woman is woman and keeps her place she will get more protection and more consideration than man gets. When she abdicates her throne she throws down the scepter of her power and loses her influence.
 
Woman suffrage has been proven a failure in states that have tried it. It is wrong. California should profit by the mistakes of other states. Not one reform has equal suffrage effected. On the contrary, statistics go to show that in most equal suffrage states, Colorado particularly, that divorces have greatly increased since the adoption of the equal suffrage amendment, showing that it has been a home destroyer. Crime has also increased due to lack of the mothers in the home. 

Woman is woman. She can not unsex herself or change her sphere. Let her be content with her lot and perform those high duties intended for her by the Great Creator, and she will accomplish far more in governmental affairs that she can ever accomplish by mixing up in the dirty pool of politics. Keep the home pure and all will be well with the Republic. Let not the sanctity of the home be invaded by every little politician that may be running up and down the highway for office. Let the manly men and the womanly women defeat this amendment and keep woman where she belongs in order that she may retain the respect of all mankind. 

J. B. Sanford, Senator 
4th District

Global women religious leaders to gather in Rome
Prophetic and mystical aspects of religious life to be evaluated
by Thomas C. Fox
May. 04, 2010  

Some 800 women religious leaders will gather in Rome this week to assess the lives of their communities and to recommit them in efforts to seek justice and hope in the wider world.

They will gather under the auspices of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG). The theme of their general assembly, which meets every few years, is an examination of the mystical and the prophetic aspects of religious life.

The UISG represents some 600,000 women religious. The assembly begins May 7 and will draw together hundreds of religious superiors, including 465 from Europe; 67 from Asia; 102 from Africa; 152 from the Americas and 15 from Oceania.

The UISG is an outgrowth of the Second Vatican Council. It is a canonically approved organization of general superiors of institutes of Catholic women religious and is intended to provide an international forum in which women religious leaders can share experiences, exchange information, and set directions for their work.

Reflecting the hardships and sufferings of the marginalized of the world as well as the hope Christians brings to the suffering, the theme for this year’s general assembly is “drinking from the fountain that springs forth and flows…although it is night.” The words are taken from the writings of St. John of the Cross.

In 2001, at the outset of the new millennium, the UISG, working through a general assembly, issued what has since been viewed as a foundational declaration, pledging religious congregations around the world to “work in solidarity with one another” in order to address “the abuse and sexual exploitation of women and children with particular attention to the trafficking of women.”

That assembly also declared it would work to “promote the education and formation of women within and outside our own organizations … to insure the holistic development of women at every stage of life” and to help women gain fuller “appreciation of their God-given gifts to promote and enhance life.”

The UISG has also reflected a wider focus by international women religious communities that have worked to enhance human rights and reduce poverty. The 2001 declaration proclaimed “solidarity with the poorest countries” of the world and pledged to work with those nations for the cancellation of the international debt.

The UISG has also focused on peace and ecological issues. “As women opposed to the perpetuation of war and violence, we express our commitment to the creation of a culture of peace and we call on heads of governments and multi-national companies to stop the sale and purchase of armaments,” the 2001 declaration stated.

“As women concerned about the preservation of Mother Earth, we will take action when and wherever possible to end the destructive behavior that causes global warming and climate change and threatens all forms of life on our planet.”

The international women religious group meets at a time that U.S. women religious are facing two Vatican investigations, one by the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and one by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

The former congregation is involved in a three-year study, officially called an Apostolic Visitation, of U.S. religious communities; the latter is examining the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that represents 95 percent of all the U.S. women religious congregations. The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith has suggested that LCWR has not adequately upheld official church teachings on the issues of women’s ordination, homosexuality and abortion.

Fox is NCR Editor and can be reached at tfox@ncronline.org.



http://ncronline.org/news...us-leaders-gather-rome

Recently I read an excellent article in The New York Times where the author distinguished the rigid all-male hierarchy from the grass-roots people of the Church who continue to do admirable work in places like Darfur and Haiti and all around the world.
The article reminds me how important it is that the word “Church” be preserved for the whole complex Catholic community and not be identified with the hierarchy whether in praise or in blame.
The Church is much more than the heirarchy.  Don't let the hierarchy hijack that term.

Draft law opens way for first women bishops by 2014  
by Ruth Gledhill and Jack Grimston  
The Sunday Times 
May 9, 2010 

THE Church of England has paved the way for ordination of its first women bishops with new legislation that it hopes will prevent Anglicans splitting over the issue.  A draft law released yesterday, which has taken nearly two years to complete, could lead to the first women bishops being ordained in 2014, 20 years after female priests were first welcomed into the church.   

It would bring the Church of England into line with Anglicans in America, Canada and Australia, while simultaneously widening the gulf with Catholics in Rome.  

. . .

Read complete article, click here:  [link=http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.ashx?m=35274]http://www.womenpriests.o./circles/fb.ashx?m=35274[/link]

Protecting Hans Küng At the Stake 
by Christine Hogan 
cathnews.com 
May 10, 2010 

 

CathNews is delivered into my in box the same time it hits yours – between 8.30 and 9am, generally. 

Sometimes, though, because of the nature of some of the material, I am alerted to what is coming a little ahead of time. At that stage, I generally get out the tin helmet and climb under the parapet and wait. 

No one requires more of a heavy duty helmet than Fr Hans Küng, the Swiss-born theologian.  Fr Küng is a priest in good standing with the Church, although he has had a long and frequently controversial history within it and the Vatican has revoked his authority to teach Catholic theology. It wasn’t always thus: In 1960, Fr Küng was appointed professor of theology at Eberhard Karls University, Tubingen, Germany. In 1962, Pope John XXIII appointed him, along with his colleague Joseph Ratzinger, as an expert theological advisor to members of the Second Vatican Council until its conclusion in 1965.  


. . .


Read complete article, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.ashx?m=35279

CathBlog - Vatican's No. 2 questions celibacy 
by MICHAEL KELLY 
cathnews.com 
May 4, 2010   

  
   

  
Cardinal Bertone's concession last week - that questioning celibacy as a requirement for priestly ministry - is hardly novel. But it does represent admission for the first time at the highest level of Catholic leadership that a discussion is well and truly underway in the wider Church.  Cardinal Bertone is No. 2 in the Vatican after the Pope. Before becoming Secretary of State, he was No. 2 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  



. . .


Read complete article, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.ashx?m=35281

Summer Programme at Boston University's School of Theology:
 

Sister Joan Chittister, osb 
 
Joan Chittister is teaching a course, “Contemporary Spirituality: Adventure in Questions” at Boston University’s School of Theology and Ministry Summer Institute, July 12-16. The course description reads: “This course will compare strains of spirituality in the past to the nature, themes and interests most common in the spiritual literature of the present. Examples of these materials will be drawn from contemporary works of the author herself. Particular attention will be paid to Benedictine Spirituality — its basic values, its application to the 21st century and its place in personal spiritual development. To register, visit the Boston College Website.

While in the Boston area, Sister Joan will give a public lecture, “God, Women & the World,” at Regis College, Weston, MA, on Monday, July 19, 2010.

Pope pins scandal on Church 'sin'
BBC News
May 11, 2010
 
Pope Benedict XVI says the Church's child abuse scandal shows that the greatest threat to Catholicism comes from "sin within" the Church.  
 

The Pope's comments were the most comprehensive yet made to the press 

He made his comments in response to a question while en route to Portugal.   Critics have previously accused the Vatican of attempting to blame the media and the Church's opponents for the escalation of the scandal.   But the Pope made clear its origin came from within the Church itself, and said forgiveness "does not replace justice".   
 
. . .
 
Read complete message, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.ashx?m=35290

 
 
 
 
 
 
On this day  May 14 in 1961: A Greyhound bus with first group of Freedom Riders bombed and burned near Anniston, Alabama, USA.
 

 

Dear friends,

For those among us who are new to CIRCLES dialogues, this note of introduction explains the spirit of one of our conversation threads.

From a practical point of view, work for women's ordination includes labouring for cultural transformation. There is deep resistance by some people to acknowledging the fact that God is calling women to be Catholic priests.  For the people working for change, facing community resistance is not an easy part of the journey. Despite the fact that work for justice is a noble endeavor, shunning, condemnation, abusive rhetoric and hostility are realities sometimes encountered by those who forge ahead.

Though many are the tests of determination and committment, sources of inspiration are plentiful, too. We are not alone. Many brothers and sisters have travelled parallel journeys before us. When we look to them for role models, we can learn from and be inspired by them.
The Freedom Riders give us one such example. 
 

 
The Freedom Riders were Civil Rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the Supreme Court's 1960 decision that outlawed racial segregation in restaurants and waiting rooms of bus terminals that served buses crossing state lines.
 
Despite the Supreme Court's ruling that granted interstate travelers the legal right to ignore local segregation laws in interstate transportation facilities, in the deep South, the Jim Crow laws  upholding racial segregation remained in force by virtue of local people following local law or custom.  The Freedom Riders purposefully set out to challenge this practice by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge the local practices that enforced segregation.
 
The Freedom Riders faced tough challenges.  Their rights were not enforced. Their actions were considered criminal throughout most of the South. For example, when they arrived in Mississippi, their trip ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel.  Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses. Similar arrests took place in other Southern cities.

The Freedom Riders -- committed agents of change -- knew that they faced arrest by authorities determined to stop their protests and possible mob violence. Before starting, they committed themselves to a strategy of non-violent resistance. The riders borrowed this strategy from Gandhi, which had first been used in America by Martin Luther King Jr during the bus boycott in Montgomery.

Though they often received hostile response,  the courage of The Freedom Riders in moving forward bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement.  They called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. 

 


They are remembered today for their commitment and courage... they are inspiring and serve as sources of empowerment for our own work for women.

In this spirit, we gather in the threads titled Heroic Agents of Change in our Inspiration forum  to read the stories of the world's inspiring and heroic agents of change and transformation. Though not necessarily connected to our Catholic faith community in name, through their works for truth and justice, they share a journey with us. They continue to serve by inspiring us when perseverence is tough. 

Please enjoy. If you have any questions, as always let me know. 

~Sophie~ 

Italy to have married teacher as first woman priest 
BBC News 
May 13, 2010   

A married teacher is poised to become Italy's first woman priest when she is ordained later this month in an Anglican church close to the Vatican.    Maria Longhitano, a member of the breakaway Old Catholic Church, says she hopes her ordination will break down "prejudice" in the Roman Church.  The event may energise the debate among Roman Catholics about the role of women, a BBC correspondent says.  
 
Pope Benedict is implacably opposed to women as priests. 
 
  
Christianity's biggest denomination opposes the ordination of women

His predecessor, John Paul II, even banned official discussion of the issue, BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott notes.
Although Mrs Longhitano will not be a Roman Catholic priest, her ordination in the borrowed Anglican church will be acutely uncomfortable for the Vatican, he says.  When seven Roman Catholic women were unofficially ordained in 2002 they were promptly excommunicated.  

Mrs Longhitano, who says she has always wanted to be a priest and played with communion wafers as a child, has accused the Vatican of preventing women from fulfilling their vocation.  She said she hoped her ordination would galvanise debate among Roman Catholics about modernisation.

Some Catholics believe reform is necessary to reverse a decline in numbers and influence and an Austrian bishop said this week that the Church should eventually consider the ordination of women.  The Old Catholics broke away from the Vatican in the 19th Century, rejecting belief in the immaculate conception and the infallibility of the Pope.  Their Church - which leaves issues such as homosexual relationships and contraception up to the individuals' consciences - has ordained women since 1996. 


[link=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8681779.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h.world/europe/8681779.stm[/link]

Drop Celibacy Requirement, Says Austrian Bishop [And Consider the Ordination of Women!]
The Herald Sun
May 13, 2010  

AN Austrian bishop who has pushed the Vatican for reforms said in an interview published overnight that the Catholic church should drop its celibacy requirement for priests.

Eisenstadt Bishop Paul Iby told the Die Presse newspaper that it should be up to priests to decide whether they want to live a celibate life and that he would welcome it if married men could be ordained. 





"It should be at the discretion of every priest whether to live in voluntary celibacy or in a family,"Die Presse quoted Bishop Iby as saying. Bishop Iby, who offered to retire when he turned 75 in January, also said that eventually the ordination of women should be considered.
 
http://www.heraldsun.com....e6frf7jx-1225865781000

Italy to ordain first woman priest  
by Nick Squires in Fatima 
The Telegraph 
May 13, 2010 

Italy is to have its first woman priest, in a move likely to upset the Roman Catholic Church and inflame the long-running debate over female clerics.  

  
Maria Vittoria Longhitano 

Maria Vittoria Longhitano, 35, will be ordained in an Anglican church in Rome, a stone's throw from the Vatican, this month.  She is not an Anglican, but a member of a small Catholic order called the Old Catholics, who broke away from the main body of the Church in the 19th century.   . . .   "My ordination represents a great chance for all women of faith. It means hope, it means giving a push to an important debate between Catholics on the issue of denying women the possibility of fulfilling their vocations and being ordained as ministers," she said.  

. . .

Read complete article, click here: Re:Ecumenism, Inter-Religious Dialogue, Benedict in Turkey 

'The days of cover-up are over,' Schönborn 
Cardinal Schönborn says Cardinal Sodano did 'massive harm'   
By John L. Allen Jr  
The National Catholic Reporter   
May, 10, 2010  


Rome -- In a rare breach of normal etiquette at senior levels of the church, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has directly accused another cardinal of complicity in the cover-up of sexual abuse allegations against his predecessor as the most important figure in the Austrian church. 

  
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna  
(CNS photo/Heinz-Peter Bader, Reuters) 

In a session with Austrian journalists in late April, as summarized by the Austrian Catholic news agency Kathpress, Schönborn said that Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, at the time the Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II, blocked an investigation of sexual abuse claims against the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna.    
 
. . .

Read complete article, click here: Re:Pope Benedict 

Mysticism, Prophecy Highlighted as Women Religious Gather
The National Catholic Reporter
May 7, 2010
Rome

Union of Superiors General Meet in Rome  Using both symbols and words, some 800 women religious from around the world sat down together here to begin exploring links between mysticism and prophecy with the aim of energizing the lives of the communities.   

 
Sister of Notre Dame de Sion Maureen Cusick, incumbent president of the International Union of Superiors General, presented the theme chosen for this year’s gathering: “I know the fountain well which flows and runs…though it is night.”  In her opening remarks she told the women the purpose of the conference was to be open to the Spirit, not come together to write a statement. But she added: “if we are really listening, in a mystical and contemplative mode, then we must speak out as prophets to the church and the world.” This, she said, could lead, in fact, to some kind of public statement.  

She called the gathering an “adventure in obedience,” explaining the women need to hear the word of God and then act on that word. 

The ‘word’, she continued, comes in many forms, not just from the Biblical text. “We hear God’s word spoken to us through the events of our day and through many situations, books, lectures…”  

 
“Our consecrated obedience calls us to be open to the word from wherever it comes, to interpret and to speak this word to others. We are here in this big event to listen together to God’s word. 800 pairs of ears and hearts.” 

The theme of mysticism and prophecy was chosen following suggestions from religious superiors. According to conference organizers, the twin theme was the resounding choice of the women. Cusick said the “the strength of your voices” in favor of the theme led organizers to believe the women are being “called again to seriously renew our commitment to the mystical aspect of our lives in order to renew also the prophetic dimension of our lives.” 


Carmelite Father Cio Garcia addresses UISG gathering  

“We cannot speak a prophetic Word,” she said, “if we are not mystics in our relationship with God.” 



Following her talk the women sat around tables to share with each other small objects they brought with them to the conference, objects that speak to each in an especially spiritual and mystical way. Some brought art works, other religious prayer objects; others lit candles and spoke about their prayer lives. Each, in turn, explained how the symbols they brought with them had touched their lives and had lead them to the Spirit.  


Spanish Carmelite Father Ciro Garcia also addressed the need to focus on mysticism and prophesy, citing the writings of St. John of the Cross. Garcia went further, saying “there is no future for religious life without mysticism and prophecy.”  

He said that all the founders and founderesses of religious orders were both mystics and prophets. “We are called to recreate their mystical-prophetic charism in the Church.”  

“Mysticism and prophecy are two essential, closely connected dimensions of every religious identity, of Christian life and of consecrated life. The first is more directly projected towards union with God, the second is more immediately oriented to the fulfillment of his will here and now.  



“Only a wise combination of both of them will forge an authentic religious identity of God and of the human person,” Garcia said. “There is no authentic mysticism if it does not flow out of an ethical and prophetic commitment, nor is it possible to think of a prophecy which is not nourished by a deep union with the divine.”  

Said the Carmelite: “Just as mystical life is characterized by the experience of the overwhelming presence of the ‘Other,’ prophetic life is characterized by listening to the Word that comes from the divine and which the prophet feels constrained to transmit, often against his will.”  

"In effect, Christianity is originally a mysticism, not ethics or a moral code; it is the mysticism of following Christ and baptismal conformation to Him. In the same way, consecrated life is mysticism and prophecy; it is essentially consecration to Christ (mysticism) and proclamation of the Good News (prophecy)."  

Fox is NCR Editor and can be reached at tfox@ncronline.org. 
http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/mysticism-prophecy-highlighted-women-religious-gather

On this day May 17, 1957: Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 30,00 on Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, DC. 

A heroic agent of change....

On this day May 17 in 1954: The US Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. In a hands down, unanimous decision, it utlaws racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal".

If the church ordained women, there would be no sex abuse crisis
By Eugene Cullen Kennedy
The National Catholic Reporter
May 21, 2010
 
Some years ago I asked in a column, "If the church ordained women would there be fewer abortions?" I suggested that recognizing women as fully equal with men would have obviated centuries of the repression, injustice, and pain inflicted on women and cleared the air of the edgy suspicion and anxiety with which many men, including church leaders, have regarded women throughout the centuries.
 

Eugene Cullen Kennedy
 
In the last century, women sought equal rights for themselves as human beings from the men who had grown up believing that they constituted a second and lesser sex whose main role was, in ways too many to number and too scandalous to name, to take care of them. Had the church ordained women it would have automatically changed history, making them equal in all ways, and striking off the emotional chains that had bound them, voiceless, in time's dungeon. Men would have had to relate to them on the same footing and much of the longing for independence that is symbolized in the abortion struggle would have been lessened.
 
This is beginning to sound as improbable as "Avatar," but duck away from the cascade of unconvincing arguments dumped on women (e.g., "Women don't look like men so they can't represent Jesus,"} by the usual suspects of the curial all-star theology team. Imagine instead that the church had affirmed their human equality by welcoming women into the priesthood. What would the results be?
 
. . .
 
Read complete article, click here: Re:Abuse of Authority?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
On this day May 21 in 1851 – Slavery is abolished in Columbia, South America.

Dear friends

If you are new to womenpriests.org, you will soon learn that the issue of slavery gets a fair bit of press from time to time in our discussions. Anticipating that you will be questioning 'why?' and wondering 'what is the connection between slavery and women's ordination?', the short answer is this. Defenders of the Vatican ban against women's ordination argue that:

• "This is the way it has always been."  The ban has consistently been part of Church teaching.   
• the Vatican does not make mistakes.

At first blush, these might seem like good points. But, when we equip ourselves with information, we will recognise the facts as these. Historical record shows that the Vatican does not always get things 'right' on first strike.   Just a little over one hundred years ago, the Vatican still maintained an age old teaching that slavery was willed by God.  Throughout most of our ecclesiastical history, the Vatican taught clearly that slavery was in accord with both divine and natural law. Were it not for the courage of abolitionists who laboured to bring about transformation in teaching and law in both Church and society, the institution of slavery might still well be thriving.

Thanks be to God that Church leaders were opened to gaining deeper clarity about Christ's truth.  In 1965 at the Second Vatican Council, the world's bishops decisively condemned slavery as an offence to the dignity of the human person.
 
So what about women's ordination?   As the change in teaching on slavery shows, when consciences allow themselves to be illuminated by Christ's light and as we are able to see more clearly, we know there are many instances where Church teachings have necessarily evolved and transformed so as to bring our faith community into closer communion with Christ.

The Vatican's record on teachings about slavery provides one example of the kind of evolution I write about. We know that society in general adapted more quickly than did the Church in condemning the practice of slavery.  For instance, the British House of Commons passed 'The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act on March 25, 1807. The nation of Cuba banned slavery as early as 1824, and in 1837, American abolitionist, Elijah P. Lovejoy became a martyr for the cause when a pro-slavery mob burned down a warehouse where his printing press was housed. 
 

Wood engraving of the pro-slavery mob burning down the warehouse
where American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper
editor and abolitionist, Elijah P. Lovejoy, kept his printing press.
Lovejoy was murdered -- martyred -- by the mob.  
 
In 1866, Rome was still positively endorsing slavery as justifiable in the eyes of God. Historical record tells us that in:

1866 AD: The Holy Office in an instruction signed by Pope Pius IX declares: Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery, and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons … It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given".
 

Thanks to an evolution of understanding of Truth, today the Vatican categorically condemns slavery as an offense to human dignity.

Application to the case for women's ordination: In the same way -- through an evolution of understanding of Truth -- we are learning that the exclusion of women from priesthood is not of God. Exclusion, like slavery, constitutes a serious error on the part of teaching authority. The exclusion of women is offensive to human dignity.

Documentation included in our library makes clear that slavery is not the only example where an evolution in understanding thus a change in Church teaching has occurred. I invite you to consider the following links:

• serious mistakes 
• 65 Church teachings once held to be authoritive and which have now changed!
• Culture Shift
• The Facts
• Lessons from History
• The Dynamics of Change

Because our Church shows its capacity to embrace necessary evolutions in teachings so as to journey in closer communion with Christ's Truth, it does have the capacity to move forward with teachings about women priests, too! While Truth never changes, the attempt to defend the exclusion of women from Holy Orders on the basis that 'this is the way it always has been' is like a last ditch kitchen sink argument. It is neither convincing nor sound.

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

  Pope Pius IX surrounded by Clergy
mantelletta/wikipedia

In 1866 Pope Pius IX declares:

Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery, and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons. It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given.

 

Abolishing slavery

Timeline: World Response to Slavery
 
Early timeline 
 
Note that many of these changes were reversed in practice over the succeeding centuries.

• 1102 - Trade in slaves and serfdom ruled illegal in London: Council of Westminster
• 1117 - Slavery abolished in Iceland
• 1215 - Magna Carta recognizes the right to liberty in England
• 1274 - Landslova (Land's Law) in Norway mentions only former slaves, which indicates that slavery was abolished in Norway
• 1335 - Sweden and Finland make slavery illegal

Modern timeline

• 1588 - Lithuania and Japan abolish slavery
• 1600 - Last villein dies in England
• 1723 - Russia abolishes slavery
• 1761 - Portugual abolishes slavery
• 1772 - Slavery declared illegal in England, including overseas slaves living in England. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield rules that English law does not support slavery.
• 1777 - Slavery abolished in Madeira
• 1777 - Slavery abolished in Vermont, USA
• 1778 - Slavery illegal in Scotland
• 1783 - Russia abolishes slavery in Crimean Khanate
• 1783 - Massachusetts rules slavery illegal based on 1780 constitution
• 1783 - Bukovina: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor issued an order abolishing slavery on June 19, 1783 in Czernowitz
• 1787 - Sierra Leone founded by British as state for emancipated slaves
• 1787 - Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade founded in Britain
• 1788 - Sir William Dolben's Act regulating the conditions on British slave ships enacted
• 1791 - Haiti gains independence and emancipation
• 1792 - Slave trading abolished in Denmark (though slavery continues to 1847).
• 1794 - Upper Canada, by Act Against Slavery
• 1794 - French First Republic abolishes slavery (re-established by Napoleon in 1802)
• 1799 - New York State introduces gradual emancipation
• 1802 - Denmark abolishes slave trade in Danish colonies
• 1802 - Slavery re-introduced in France
• 1803 - Lower Canada abolishes slavery
• 1804 - Haiti abolishes slavery
• 1807 - Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: slave trading abolished in British Empire. Captains fined £100 per slave transported.
• 1807 British begin patrols of African coast to arrest slaving vessels. West Africa Squadron (Royal Navy) established to suppress slave trading; by 1865, nearly 150,000 people freed by anti-slavery operations
• 1807 - Abolition in Prussia, Germany - The Stein-Hardenberg Reforms.
• 1808 - United States -- importation of slaves into the US prohibited after Jan. 1.
• 1811 - Slave trading made a felony in the British Empire punishable by transportation for British subjects and Foreigners.
• 1811 - Spain abolishes slavery at home and in all colonies except Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo
• 1814 - Dutch outlaw slave trade
• 1815 - British pay Portuguese £750,000 (several hundred million dollars in current values) to cease their trade
• 1815 - Congress of Vienna. 8 Victorious powers declared their opposition to slavery
• 1817 - Spain paid £400,000 by British to cease trade to Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo
• 1818 - Treaty between Britain and Spain to abolish slave trade
• 1818 - Treaty between Britain and Portugual to abolish slave trade 
• 1818 - France and Holland abolish slave trading
• 1819 - Treaty between Britain and Netherlands to abolish slave trade 
• 1821 - Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela abolish slavery
• 1821 - Liberia founded by USA as state for emancipated slaves.
• 1822 - Greece abolishes slavery.
• 1823 - Chile abolishes slavery
• 1827 - Treaty between Britain and Sweden to abolish slave trade 
• 1829 - Mexico abolishes slavery
• 1831 - Bolivia abolishes slavery
• 1834 - The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force, abolishing slavery throughout most of the British Empire. The exceptions being territories controlled by the Honourable East India Company and the islands of Ceylon and St. Helena.
• 1834 - Jamaica abolishes slavery
• 1835 - Treaty between Britain and France to abolish slave trade 
• 1835 - Treaty between Britain and France and Denmark to abolish slave trade 
• 1836 - Portugual abolishes transatlantic slave trade
• 1839 - British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society founded, now called Anti-Slavery International
• 1839 - Indian indenture system made illegal
• 1840 - Treaty between Britain and Venezuela to abolish slave trade 
• 1841 - Quintuple Treaty is signed.  England, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria agree to suppress slave trade
• 1842 - Webster-Ashburton Treaty between Britain and USA
• 1842 - Uruguay abolishes slavery
• 1843 - Honourable East India Company becomes increasingly controlled by Britain and abolishes slavery in India by the Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843.
• 1843 - Treaty between Britain and Uruguay to suppress slave trade
• 1843 - Treaty between Britain and Mexico to suppress slave trade
• 1843 - Treaty between Britain and Chile to suppress slave trade 
• 1843 - Argentina abolishes slavery
• 1843 - Treaty between Britain and Bolivia to abolish slave trade 
• 1845 - 36 British Navy ships are assigned to the Anti-Slavery Squadron, making it one of the largest fleets in the world.
• 1846 - Tunisia abolishes slavery
• 1847 - Sweden abolishes slavery
• 1848 - Denmark abolishes slavery
• 1848 - Slavery abolished in all French and Danish colonies
• 1848 - France founds Gabon for settlement of emancipated slaves.
• 1848 - Treaty between Britain and Muscat to suppress slave trade
• 1849 - Treaty between Britain and Persian Gulf states to suppress slave trade 
• 1850 - United States: Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
• 1851 - Brazil ends slave trade
• 1854 - Peru abolishes slavery
• 1854 - Venezuela abolishes slavery
• 1855 - Moldavia abolishes slavery
• 1856 - Wallachia abolishes slavery
• 1860 - Indenture system abolished in British occupied India
• 1861 - Russia frees its serfs in the Emancipation reform of 1861.
• 1862 - Treaty between United States and Britain for the suppression of the slave trade (African Slave Trade Treaty Act)
• 1862 - Cuba abolishes slave trade
• 1863 - Slavery abolished in Dutch colonies
• 1863 - United States:Emancipation Proclamation declares those slaves in Confederate-controlled areas to be freed.
• 1865 - United States abolishes slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
• 1869 - Portugual abolishes slavery in the African colonies
• 1871 - Brazil declares free the sons and daughters born to slave mothers after September 28, 1871.
• 1873 - Puerto Rico abolishes slavery
• 1873 - Treaty between Britain and Zanzibar and Madagascar to suppress slave trade
• 1874 - Britain abolishes slavery in Ghana (the Gold Coast) (after Third Anglo-Asante War and British annexation of the Gold Coast in 1874)
• 1886 - Cuba abolishes slavery
• 1888 - Brazil abolishes slavery
• 1890 - Brussels Act - Treaty granting anti-slavery powers the right to stop and search ships for slaves
• 1894 - Korea abolishes slavery
• 1896 - France abolishes slavery in Madagascar
• 1897 - Zanzibar abolishes slavery
• 1905 - Siam (Thailand) abolishes slavery
• 1910 - China abolishes slavery
• 1923 - Afghanistan abolishes slavery
• 1924 - Iraq abolishes slavery
• 1924 - League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission
• 1926 - Slavery Convention. Bound all signatories to end slavery CONVENTION TO SUPPRESS THE SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY (25 Sep 1926)
• 1926 - Nepal abolishes slavery
• 1928 - Iran abolishes slavery
• 1928 - Domestic slavery practised by local African elites abolished in Sierra Leone (paradoxically established as a place for freed slaves). A study found practices of domestic slavery still widespread in rural areas in the 1970s.
• 1936 - Britain abolishes slavery in Northern Nigeria
• 1942 - Ethiopia abolishes slavery
• 1948 - UN Article 4 of the Declaration of Human Rights bans slavery globally
• 1952 - Qatar abolishes slavery
• 1952 - Saudi Arabia abolishes slavery
• 1962 - Yemen abolishes slavery
• 1963 - United Arab Emirates abolishes slavery
• 1970 - Oman abolishes slavery
• 1981 - Mauritania abolishes slavery (Mauritania has repeatedly abolished slavery. It is the last country to still have chattel slavery.)
• Slavery continues today with illegal human trafficking

[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline]http://en.wikipedia.org/w...on_of_slavery_timeline[/link]

Dear friends,

Drawing from data in J.F.Maxwell's, ‘The Development of Catholic Doctrine concerning Slavery’, World Jurist 11 (1969-70) pp. 147-192 and 291-324, our website founder, Dr. John Wijngaards has prepared a helpful table showing the evolution through time of Rome's teachings about slavery.  The chart illustrates how change has happened... beginning with outright support for slavery right up to today...outright condemnation of it! 

The chart is found in our library at: http://www.womenpriests.org/teaching/slavery1.asp.  A copy of it follows here.  If you have any questions, let me know.

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

362 AD: The local Council at Gangra in Asia Minor excommunicates anyone encouraging a slave to despise his master or withdraw from his service. (Became part of Church Law from the 13th century).

354-430 AD: St. Augustine teaches that the institution of slavery derives from God and is beneficial to slaves and masters. (Quoted by many later Popes as proof of "Tradition".)

650 AD: Pope Martin I condemns people who teach slaves about freedom or who encourage them to escape.

1089 AD: The Synod of Melfi under Pope Urban II imposed slavery on the wives of priests. (Became part of Church Law from the 13th century).

1179 AD: The Third Lateran Council imposed slavery on those helping the Saracens.

1226 AD: The legitimacy of slavery is incorporated in the Corpus Iuris Canonici, promulgated by Pope Gregory IX which remained official law of the Church until 1913. Canon lawyers worked out four just titles for holding slaves: slaves captured in war, persons condemned to slavery for a crime; persons selling themselves into slavery, including a father selling his child; children of a mother who is a slave.

1224-1274 AD: St.Thomas Aquinas defends slavery as instituted by God in punishment for sin, and justified as being part of the ‘right of nations’ and natural law. Children of a slave mother are rightly slaves even though they have not committed personal sin! (Quoted by many later Popes).

1435 AD: Pope Eugenius IV condemns the indiscriminate enslavement of natives in the Canary Islands, but does not condemn slavery as such.

1454 AD: Through the bull Romanus Pontifex, Pope Nicholas V authorises the king of Portugal to enslave all the Saracen and pagan peoples his armies may conquer.

1493 AD: Pope Alexander VI authorises the King of Spain to enslave non-Christians of the Americas who are at war with Christian powers.

1537 AD: Pope Paul III condemns the indiscriminate enslavement of Indians in South America. 

1548 AD: The same Pope Paul III confirms the right of clergy and laity to own slaves.

1639 AD: Pope Urban VIII denounces the indiscriminate enslavement of Indians in South America, without denying the four ‘just titles’ for owning slaves.

1741 AD: Pope Benedict XIV condemns the indiscriminate enslavement of natives in Brazil, but does not denounce slavery as such, nor the importation of slaves from Africa.

1839 AD: Pope Gregory XVI condemns the international negro slave trade, but does not question slavery as such, nor the domestic slave trade.

1866 AD: The Holy Office in an instruction signed by Pope Pius IX declares: Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery, and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons … It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given".


The turn around

1888 AD: Pope Leo III condemns slavery in more general terms, and supports the anti-slavery movement.

1918 AD: The new Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope Benedictus XV condemns ‘selling any person as a slave’. (There is no condemnation of ‘owning’ slaves, however).

1965 AD: The Second Vatican Council defends basic human rights and denounces all violations of human integrity, including slavery (Gaudium et Spes, no 27,29,67).

http://www.womenpriests.org/teaching/slavery1.asp 

 


 

 
 
 
 
In 1965, the Vatican finally gets it right when it declares:

Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as . . . arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and slavery . . . all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society and are a supreme dishonour to the Creator . . .

Human institutions, both private and public, must labour to minister to the dignity and purpose of the human person. Let them put up a stubborn fight against any form of slavery and safeguard the basic human rights under any political system.

Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes (AD 1965) § 27, 29

Dear friends,

On the matter of slavery, the Vatican's current Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal William Levada  acknowledges:

There is a long tradition in the church of accepting the institution of slavery, but in the light of the repeated teachings of modern popes and the Second Vatican Council on the dignity of the human person, church teaching has evolved from acceptance of slavery as part of the human condition to its eventual condemnation.

- Cardinal William Levada, Prefect for the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith

Cardinal William Levada
Current Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith

Those of us working for the ordination of women generously applaud the Vatican for finally getting it right in endorsing a categorical condemnation of slavery in its modern teachings.  Thanks to the agents for change who courageously worked for abolition, the Vatican  finally saw the light! 

Please join us now in this campaign as we work towards conversion of the Vatican... encouraging them to see the light that women do have a place as deacons, priests, bishops and even popes within our Church.

We appreciate your presence here!  Welcome!  Please explore and enjoy our site.  If you have any questions, let me know.

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

 
 
  
  
  
 
The implications for ordination of women?  We respectfully submit: Both history and modern day show that the Vatican does make mistakes.  It is doing so when it insists on the exclusion of women from the priesthood.  What  does history shows?  Once errors are realised, though it may at times be slow to move the Vatican does demonstrate capacity to get things right...and to become champions for a cause!  With hope in our hearts, we press on! 

Calling all agents of change -- help open the doors to women deacons... women priests... and women bishops... and yes, women popes!!!!

Dear friends,

In order to remain prophetic, the Catholic Church must continue to adapt to a deepening comprehension of truth. It is concerning that the Vatican stubbornly insists on its ban against women in ordained ministry when:

• evidence shows clearly there are no justifications --scriptural, traditional, theological and otherwise -- to justify the ban
• and while the majority of the world is working to gain ground in conquering the evil of discrimination against women.

The world is more clearly appreciating the truth. So too must Rome... We cannot permit the Vatican to hide from the truth or hide the truth from the faithful ... especially since it claims to lead!

Given the global nature of our Church, its face in the developing world, and its capacity for connection between First and Third Worlds, a potentially positive consequence of ending discrimination against women inside the Church will be the concurrent energy that waits to be harnessed to build justice for women in the world.

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
On this day May 21 in 1856 – Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.

Will Sisters Save the Catholic Church?
The problem is not the person of the pope as much as the understanding of the power of the papacy.
By Mary E. Hunt
Religious Dispatches
May 23, 2010


Dr. Mary E. Hunt
 
Though Catholic sisters continue their ministries with the sick and the poor, their simple living, and penchant for green, the media is beginning to pay a lot of attention. The Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation, an investigation of women's religious orders in the U.S., is in full swing, with few optimistic about its outcome. The letter the women religious wrote in support of the health care bill which was opposed by the U.S. Catholic Bishops has made them heroines or heretics, depending on one’s politics. One sister was recently removed from her hospital administration position and allegedly excommunicated for her role in deciding to save the life of a woman who was 11 weeks pregnant by permitting an abortion in a Catholic hospital in Phoenix.
 
I want to clarify a few basic issues lest the move to focus finally on Catholic women backfire inadvertently. While Maureen Dowd wants a nun for pope, and Nicholas Kristof extols the virtues of “lowly nuns” and all who work for justice, I worry that a lack of nuance can replicate the dynamics of patriarchy only with a few women religious in charge—or held responsible—this time. Catholicism is simply more complex than that. And the sisters, for the most part, are not interested.
. . .
 
Read complete text, click here: Re:Apostolic Visitation of US Women Religious