Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
Note: The MP purposely used the loaded word "fundamentalist" to equate devout Catholics with terrorists. This is pure persecution and is growing throughout the west. He is using as leverage the tax money used to support these schools. Catholics needs to fight back by pointing out what "fundamentalist" Catholic doctrine really teaches about educating the young, caring for the sick, loving our enemies, etc. and counter the claim about money with the huge benefits Catholic institutions have always conferred upon society.
Catholic activist says, "To secularists anyone who actually believes his religion is a 'fundamentalist'".
By Hilary White
LONDON, February 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Last month, LifeSiteNews.com reported that a British Parliamentarian had threatened to "investigate" what he called an increase in "fundamentalism" among British Catholic bishops in regulations for Catholic schools. This week, the Independent reports that MP Barry Sheerman, the chairman of a Commons select committee, is going ahead with the investigation.
The Independent reports that the Children, Schools and Families Committee will "call Catholic bishops to account" for recent isolated attempts to re-install genuine Catholic doctrine on moral and sexual teaching into the schools' curriculum. The reaction from Parliament comes in response to a document issued by Lancaster Bishop Patrick O'Donohue, "Fit for Mission: Schools," an instruction to revamp Catholic education in the diocese of Lancaster based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield and the Labour chairman of the committee, told the Independent that while the spokesmen for the English Catholic Church had "often peddled a softer line" on moral issues, the publication of Fit for Mission seems "at odds" with what was happening "on the ground".
"A lot of taxpayers' money is going into church schools and I think we should tease out what is happening here," said Sheerman. "We seem to have a shift in emphasis on the ground despite what the reasonable voices of the leadership are saying."
The Committee will interrogate the bishops on their approach in the schools to abortion, sex education and "PSHE" (personal and social health education).
But in a pamphlet titled "Will Your Grandchildren be Catholic?" Daphne MacLeod, a Catholic activist and former headmistress, writes that it is precisely this "softer line" preferred by Mr. Sheerman that has eroded the genuine Catholic religious nature of the Church's schools.
McLeod, the head of the Catholic education advocacy group, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, told LifeSiteNews.com that the investigation by the Parliamentary Committee is an "ominous" stroke by an increasingly aggressive secularist government against religious institutions. The use of the term "fundamentalist" is especially offensive she said, and is a transparent attempt at equating believing Christians with violent Islamic extremism.
"To secularists," McLeod said, "anyone who actually believes his religion is a 'fundamentalist'. But Christian 'fundamentalists' are the ones who are around the world looking after AIDS patients, who started hospitals and schools."
McLeod said the implication that "fundamentalist" Christianity is some kind of threat to the state is an insult. "Let them show us some proof that there is a danger. Christian 'fundamentalists' are the ones who practice forgiveness and who are taught to 'turn the other cheek'. Show us how that is a threat."
Fr. Timothy Finigan, a Catholic priest and theology professor who founded the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life, agreed that the use of the term "fundamentalist" was a scare tactic.
The message, Fr. Finigan wrote, is clear to bishops who dare to step away from the "softer" line of the mainstream of Catholic episcopal leadership. "There's that 'F' word beloved of the secularists everywhere, conjuring up images of suicide bombers, blown-up buses and women in burkhas," he wrote.
Sheerman's comments about tax-funding for the Catholic schools was also a rhetorical attack, Fr. Finigan wrote. "Let's be clear about this. Catholics also pay tax. The money does not belong to the government, it belongs to us and is given to the government in trust for use for our benefit."
Catholic schools in Britain are owned by the Church and operate using tax funding to help maintain buildings. Fr. Finigan wrote, "If Catholic children are not educated in Catholic schools, they will be educated in community schools at the expense of the state anyway."
"By his emotive appeal, Sheerman is attacking the historic agreement of 1944 with little less subtlety than the 'No Rome on the Rates' campaigns of a former era."
To contact Barry Sheerman: House of Commons London SW1A 0AA Telephone: 020 7219 5037 Fax: 020 7219 2404 Email: SHEERMANB@parliament.uk
1 And a great sign was seen [ophthe] in the heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown [stephanos] of twelve stars, 2 and holding in womb, and she cried out having birth pangs and being put to the test to bring forth. 3 and there was seen another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fire-colored dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems, 4 and its tail dragged by force [syrei] the third of the stars of the heaven and cast out them unto the earth, and the dragon took his stand in the presence of the woman the one about to bear, so that when she bore it might devour the thing born of her [to teknon autës]. 5 and she bore a son virile [yion arsen], who was about to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. and snatched away was the thing born of her to the God and to his throne. 6 and the woman fled unto the wilderness, where she has therein a place prepared by the God, so that therein they may nourish her [trephosin auten] for days one thousand two hundred sixty.
A long time ago, in a mind far, far away, there sprang an opinion. Since then, many hundreds of millions of people have propagated that opinion and perpetuated it into an inveterate tradition throughout the Church, to wit, that the "woman clothed with the sun" is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I would gladly agree with the many hundreds of millions who assert that 12:1 describes Mary, if I could with impunity take that verse out of its context. But, John warned rue not to add one word to the prophecy and not to subtract one word from it, as stated in 22:18-19; and, surely, what applies to one word in the prophecy must apply to a whole verse.
Let the reader please note the little comma after the noun "stars" at the end of verse 1; that comma is followed by the connective kai at the beginning of verse 2; and the "period," which ends the sentence composed of verses 1 & 2, comes after the infinitive "to bear" or "to bring forth" [tekein]. This all means that the contents of verse 2 are connected to and simultaneous with the contents of verse 1. Hence, according to the many hundreds of millions, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has already died and been assumed, body and soul, into the glorified state and has been crowned Queen of Heaven, is again pregnant--in heaven above, no less!--where, according to Christ, there is no marriage.
Perhaps, the many millions are tacitly asserting that Mary became Queen of Heaven before Jesus was born, and that, therefore, either Mary or Saint Dominic confused the order of the glorious mysteries in the Rosary, so that the Coronation should precede the Assumption. Frankly, I find it a mystery that such an opinion about 12:1 has become the first reading in the Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption. In Apocalypse 1:19, Christ told John,
"Now write the things that you saw and the things that are and the things about to come into existence after these things."
In 4:1, John is told,
"Come up hither, and I will show you the things that must come into existence after these things."
In 1:19, the term, "after these things" [meta tauta], refers to "the things that you saw and the things that are..." in 4:1; the term, "after these things," refers to the seven letters, i.e., 'the things that are." Hence, the term, 'the things that are about to come into existence," or, 'the things that must come into existence,' unmistakably refers to future things, things that would happen after the Apocalypse was copied and circulated by the year, say, 100 AD. Chapter 12 belongs to those future things, and, therefore, it has absolutely nothing to do with describing the birth and death and ascension of Jesus, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, etc. So, the argument up to this point, alone, suffices to refute the opinion that the woman is Mary.
Now I will reason from the given information in the text to the woman's real identity, keeping alert to John's practice of using physical things as symbols of spiritual things, and paying attention to context, the context that does not extend merely to the whole Apocalypse, but to the whole Bible. After all, the Apocalypse is the culmination of Biblical prophecy. John could have begun Chapter 12, typically, thus,
"And I saw a woman clothed with the sun, ..."
Instead, he wrote,
"And a great sign was seen in the heaven, ..."
With this introduction, John immediately gave the reader general instruction concerning the particulars that would follow. To call the reader's attention to this instruction, he repeated it in verse 3,
"and another sign was seen in the heaven, ..." [I trust the reader has learned that John did not employ idle repetition.]
Now, the prophetic term "sign" was mentioned often in the New Testament:
(1) The Apostles asked Jesus about the "sign" of his coming. [Mt. 24:3] (2) The Pharisees demanded that Christ prove his divinity by a 'sign from heaven." [Mt. 16:1] (3) Saint Paul warned about 'signs and false wonders" worked by evil powers. [2 Thes. 2:9] (4) Saint John mentioned signs performed by the False Prophet. [Apoc. 13:13, 16:14] (5) Simeon in the Temple prophesied of the infant Jesus: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." [Lk. 2:34-35]
From the aforegiven instances may be drawn the idea that "a sign is someone or something VISIBLE to the naked human eye." Therefore, according to John's instruction, the woman in Chapter 12 will be an entity that people CAN SEE; thus, the phrase, "in the heaven," must signify 'in the Church as VISIBLE organization."
Many a "sign" is prophetic. In Chapter 12, the woman, as 'sign," is also prophetic, for she is herself and points to something else: she is the 'GREAT sign" that alludes forward to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD. But this 'great sign" is not just the woman. Understand that this "sign" includes the son she will bring forth, and, thus, also the activity he will initiate in the Church.
Note: Much of what the Church deems immoral comes from natural law. That is to say that nature itself reveals truths about God's creation. Deviation from the truth typically and necessarily brings evil upon man. "The wages of sin are death." And sin begets more sin.
In the article below, scientists are beginning to see what damage artificial contraception does to the natural order of things. I have always believed that the epidemic of infertility in humans is due to artificial birth control and abortion. As well, many social disorders of our day are likely linked in some way to mankind turning away from God's design for us.
Bud MacFarland, Sr. once said that the greatest evil of out time is the pill because it drives a wedge between the priest and women causing both to ignore grave sin.
Study Confirms Estrogen in Water from the Pill Devastating to Fish Populations By Hilary White ST. JOHN, New Brunswick, February 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study by Dr. Karen Kidd, of the University of New Brunswick and the Canadian Rivers Institute, found that estrogen from birth control pills flooding into the water system through sewage adversely affects fish populations.
The researchers added estrogen to an experimental lake at a level commonly found in the treated wastewater from cities with about 200,000 people. The researchers discovered that one consequence is that exposed male fish become feminized, producing a protein normally found in females. Chronic exposure to estrogen led to the near extinction of the lake's fathead minnow population, as well as significant declines in larger fish, such as pearl dace and lake trout.
"We've known for some time that estrogen can adversely affect the reproductive health of fish, but ours was the first study to show the long-term impact on the sustainability of wild fish populations," explains Kidd. "What we demonstrated is that estrogen can wipe out entire populations of small fish - a key food source for larger fish whose survival could in turn be threatened over the longer term."
Kidd also noted that once the estrogen levels in the water were lowered, fish populations rebounded after three years. "Once you take the stressor out the system, we now have ample evidence that suggests affected fish populations will recover," she said.
Kidd is preparing a report for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) titled, "From Kitchen Sinks to Ocean Basins: Emerging Chemical Contaminants and Human Health".
In the 1980's and 90's, municipalities in Canada and elsewhere began stencilling pictures of fish next to storm drains to remind citizens that toxic chemicals - such as paint and motor oil - poured into the sewers would harm the environment and wildlife. In 1998, a trendy industrial designer in San Francisco won an award for creating storm drain grates shaped like fish.
Health authorities estimate that 100 million women worldwide take some form of hormonal contraceptives; but there is still little media attention given to the growing concerns of scientists about its environmental impact. However, studies are leaking out into the mainstream press more frequently as public interest in the environment grows.
The Pill, along with numerous other commonly used chemicals, end up in the water system as estrogen. At a conference on breast cancer in Toronto in 1998, author and cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love said, "Pollutants are metabolized in our bodies as estrogen. And it is lifetime exposure to estrogen that has increased world cancer rates by 26% since 1980....We live in a toxic soup of chemicals". Studies are also showing significant evidence for a link between environmental estrogens and estrogen-like chemical pollutants and the earlier onset of puberty in girls.
The phenomenon of early-onset puberty in American girls is so pervasive, that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of abnormal development. Ten years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered abnormally early, but a study in 1997 said that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of blacks and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Studies from the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand have shown similar results.
The new definition for abnormally early breast development ought to be, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for black girls. Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, said, "My fear is that medical groups could take the data and say 'This is normal. We don't have to worry about it.' My feeling is that it is not normal. It's a response to an abnormal environment."
Conclusive studies are difficult to conduct, however, because of the all-pervasive nature of the environmental contamination. With all the estrogen-like elements in the environment, Herman-Giddens said, "it's virtually impossible to study. There's no place to find an unexposed population."
Note: This plea reminds me of the cry from the martyrs under the altar in the Apocalypse. Patience is wearing thin for sure. But according to Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, Satan is in the Church, even the highest levels, and will not be cast out until the time of the "Great Sign." Until then, much suffering will continue.
MEMO TO THE POPE: PLEASE YOUR HOLINESS, ADDRESS CRISIS OF FAITH WITH THE BISHOPS
Holy Father, as everyone knows, you'll soon be among us! In April -- just a couple months away -- you will be visiting the U.S. Thank God for that! No doubt you'll handle this with your characteristic insight, prayerfulness, courage, and aplomb. We look forward to it. Thank you for being prayerful. Thank you for being faithful to the legacy of John Paul. Thank you so much for nudging our Church back to the right kind of music. Thank you for the call for protection of God's Creation. Thank you for not folding in to pressure when it came to the Good Friday prayer for Jews (in the Latin Rite). Thank you for both loving and communicating with but also standing up to Muslims. Thank you so much, Your Holiness, for gradually bringing back old Latin-style mysticism.
These are times of purification (and spiritual warfare) and of course your name is Benedict! You told us just the other day to confront evil. Our Church is going through a purification, and perhaps the beginning of recovering its lost treasures (or at least some of them). It is this, Your Holiness, that we would like to address.
May we be so bold, when it comes to your trip, as to offer a few recommendations? Please, Holy Father, speak even more on music during your trip. In some churches, it all but obscures the liturgy. There is that drumbeat. There is the sugar-sweet modernistic music -- as we try to pray. Surely there are no clashing cymbals in Heaven!
Meanwhile, homilies are often too intellectual, focused almost exclusively on the past. How about the present? How about the future? It is the dryness of religion that creates the desert. Please tell our good shepherds to speak about the miraculous! Please tell them to relate personally to us. There are miracles in our chapels. There are healings. These are largely ignored. Remember the miraculous Christian origin?
Holy Father, there is a real crisis of belief among our good bishops. You must speak to them as you never have -- with both love and urgency. There is a fear among U.S. clerics to believe in the supernatural because of what you so rightly have called the distortions of science. Please reorient our priests, our dioceses, away from scientism and back toward toward the deliverance of Jesus. Let them come into our midst in their miters and cast out spirits! Please speak on Adoration, Holy Father. Urge bishops on the importance. This alone will bring vocations and inspiration and exorcism.
There are many good, holy priests left. They live almost a white martyrdom. Often, they are cast away into the outlying parishes. But they are there. They are the backbone. They must be defended. Our Church will survive. No doubt -- even despite the crushing reality of church closings. But please tell our dear priests, Holy Father -- Our Lady's special sons -- to return to the mystical roots of the Faith. Please tell the nuns and priests and brothers and everyone else to stay clear of alternate beliefs. Holy Father, there is an epidemic here of the New Age. It has infiltrated dozens of Catholic retreat centers. Almost a majority. Many convents are less centers of prayer than ashrams. We're not sure you have been informed of the extent. Crystals, psychobabble, labyrinths. The same ones who allow all that disdain the devout and dismiss blessed salt as a superstition.
So it is, Holy Father, that naked we stand, as the enemy advances. Many clerics don't even seem to believe in the existence of the devil as he runs rampant around them (and especially in our seminaries). There is a planned "exorcism center" for Poland. How about North America? It is very serious. It must be approached as a mystical crisis, not one that can be addressed at an annual meeting. They must be pushed into a sense of battle. They must see your trip as the thunderous approach of reinforcements, of the larger battalion.
Perhaps it is time to ask the bishops and cardinals to put the tabernacle back in the center and the chairs that priests use off to the side. Perhaps this will start to humble us. Perhaps this will bring the right thing at the center. Please urge bishops who are closing churches to turn them into oratories (instead of selling them to realtors). Please address the Catholic colleges that not only ignore Catholicism but negate it. (They have a play called the Vagina Monologues at Notre Dame!)
Please, please, Holy Father: address the crisis of Catholic schools. Scold this nation for not allowing vouchers -- for not even allowing the deduction of tuition from taxes! Desperately, we need you to speak, as you have the ear of the nation, of Congress, about the incredible unfairness. Our Catholic schools can not be allowed to die. We hope we are not being pretentious but in many ways our society and our Church (at least in the West) are at a tipping point. Often, the only orthodox priests are foreign ones. As much as it hurts to say, Holy Father, many faithful have lost faith in their bishops. There are the majority who are so good and have fought the odds to be where they are -- despite the culture around them. Dear bishops indeed!
But in far too many instances -- Holy Father -- the spirit of bureaucracy has overcome the Holy Spirit. We have many good men who are not allowed into seminaries -- who are turned away because they are devout -- and priests who were never even taught how to bless a house (or Holy Water)!
Please tell your bishops to go out among the people. Please tell them to forget the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner. Please urge them to forgo the opulence. Please urge far more prayer (than administration). John Paul II prayed seven hours a day!
This we hate to discuss, but there is the abuse crisis. Holy Father, much has been purged (many abusers have been exposed), but there is still the niggling feeling that the general issue of homosexuality in the priesthood has not been fully confronted. There are churches in the U.S. that rent out to blasphemous transvestite groups but won't allow a talk on Fatima.
Holy Father, it may be a bit too critical and suspicious and ardent but it has gotten to the point where one Catholic writer in the beleaguered archdiocese of Boston has hinted (in a new book) that the slow response and at times cover-up in abuse cases was due to homosexual blackmail -- that certain bishops themselves have been compromised and thus neutralized. Is this true? Notes one reviewer: "The account offered is devastating and the blame is clearly laid at the door of the American bishops. 'The thesis of this book,' writes [author Phil] Lawler, 'is that the sex abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential; to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the Divine mandate.' Bishops again and again responded to the crisis as institutional managers, employing public relations stratagems to evade, deceive, and distract attention from their own responsibility.
"Lawler adds: 'Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of the sex abuse crisis. The corruption wrought by that influence was a more important factor.' He very gingerly addresses a theory proposed by a number of commentators on the crisis, namely, that bishops engaged in cover-ups and other deceptions because they were threatened with homosexual blackmail. He cites a number of instances in which this appears to be the case and bishops were permitted to resign when their misdeeds could no longer be denied. 'The blackmail hypothesis,' he writes, 'provides a logical explanation for behavior that is otherwise inexplicable: the bishops’ willingness to risk the welfare of the faithful and their own reputations in order to protect abusive priests.'"
These are not our words. But you see our point; you see the bitterness. You see the suspicions. We need to purge any homosexuals who have positions of any sort of prominence. There was a real and serious infiltration.
Three years ago, during the first Holy Week of your papacy, you spoke of the "filth" in the priesthood. Perhaps, when you are in New York, that language needs to be repeated. We don't like to stray so far into such territory, but you can see the mindset of many dedicated Catholics. A priest or bishop will in some cases bless a Mardi Gras or even a "gay-pride" event and do so with pleasure at the same time that he turns down Adoration.
Why, for example, would a priest wear a vestment like that to the right? How are we to react? Please call on our bishops to evangelize. Please call on them to be holy. Please call on them to evoke the Holy Spirit. He will cleanse! He will resurrect! Perhaps the best way of urging evangelization is to do so yourself during your trip -- laying on hands, exercising charisms, letting our great Church leaders know the way to evoke the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit Who will fill the pews again -- not intellectual language. We do not so much need terms like "Mulieris Dignitatem" or "humanum" as simply, "Praise God!" (or "Get thee hence, Satan!"). A Benedict you are! Like your namesake, you fight evil. And now, you will be stepping on the devil's turf. Do you not always step on the devil's turf?
And in your courage, do you not always confront evil and win?
Note: The advent of the "demographic winter" has multiple implications for the Church and points to many events described in teh Apocalypse. For one, priests come from families, most often stable ones with a married mother and father. For another, the scenes in the Apocalypse are described in terms of numbers of people in specific lands - Europe, Asia and Africa - that come into high potential as ratios change. And of course, the time of the second woe, fast approaching, is when the Church is in decline everywhere. That time can't be far off.
New documentary advocates strong families to avert "demographic winter"
Washington DC, Feb 13, 2008 / 01:25 am (CNA).- Filmmakers announced at a National Press Club press conference on Tuesday a "groundbreaking" documentary that addresses the problems of population decline and predicts a coming "demographic winter" that will result from weakened families.
Population decline is projected to seriously affect the sustainability of present societies by reducing the economic and tax bases of nations. The movie claims that as the number of elderly people swells there will be fewer and fewer young people to help care for them.
The documentary, titled "Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family," was written and directed by Rick Stout to examine developed countries that are below population replacement rates. The film brings together demographers, economists, sociologists, and civic and religious leaders to explore problems present generations will soon face due to shrinking and aging populations.
According to a press release for the film, the global birthrate has declined by 50 percent over the past half-century. Fifty nine nations, containing 44 percent of the world’s population, have birthrates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.
The filmmakers report that the European birthrate is 1.3 children per woman. This dearth of children is expected to cause Europe to have a shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030, while Russia could lose one-third of its population by 2050. The chilling effect this decline is projected to have on economics and culture has led some to dub the phenomenon a "demographic winter," a phrase from which the documentary takes its title.
"In nations with declining populations, who will operate the factories and farms? Who will guard the frontiers? With a graying population (a declining birthrate combined with growing longevity), who will support pension systems and otherwise care for the elderly?" asked the filmmakers in a press release.
Speakers at the press conference included Dr. Allan Carlson, the International Secretary of the World Council of Families; Maria Sophia Aguirre, a professor of economics at Catholic University; Patrick Fagan, a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council; and Phillip Longman, author of "The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What To Do About It."
A three-minute trailer for the documentary is available at www.demographicwinter.com.
Note: To me, the prayer for the Jews, no matter how worded, is a sign of deep love. It fits within similar prayers for atheists and non-Catholic Christians. It simply reflects an acknowledgement that we believe our religion is the sole basis for salvation. All religions have similar teachings. In the case of the Jews, we have specific affinity and common heritage. It is an article of our faith that the conversion of the Jews precedes the final judgment. The Latin form of the prayer doesn't really depart much from the form we've been using since Vatican II in terms of intent and meaning. In Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation, this is made even more clear. It is spelled out in the Bible.
Jews and the Vatican: A New Clash
Bringing back an ancient rite risked reopening ancient wounds. And so after Pope Benedict XVI introduced wider use of the old Latin rite last year, top Vatican officials promised to adjust a Good Friday prayer from the ancient liturgy that had called for the conversion of the Jews. The text of the updated version - released this week in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano - deletes offensive language referring to Jews' "blindness" and the need to "remove the veil from their hearts." But the substance is left in place: "Let us pray for the Jews," the prayer says, according to an unofficial translation from Latin. "May the Lord our God illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ savior of all men."
The wounds, according to top Jewish leaders and rabbis, have been reopened. They say the prayer, which in reality had never been scrapped completely, recalls past centuries of forced conversions and a lingering incomprehension of their faith. And while several well-known Jewish voices in New York and Jerusalem spoke of their "disappointment," the loudest - and indeed angriest - response to the revised text came from those closest to home. Late Wednesday, having had 24 hours to absorb the news and study the text, the Italian Rabbinical Assembly announced they were suspending the decades-long Jewish-Catholic dialogue for a "pause of reflection" in light of the Good Friday prayer.
Rome's chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni told reporters that the prayer brings Catholic-Jewish relations "back 43 years," noting that the 1960s Second Vatican Council had spoken of an "alliance" between the two faiths. Di Segni spoke indignantly about reassurances he said he'd received from Church leaders that his concerns about the conversion language would have been addressed. It raises questions about just what is the "image of the Jewish people for the Church," said Di Segni. "It's an old question: What are the Jews doing here on earth? If this [prayer] is the requirement for dialogue, it is intolerable. Evidently, the Church is having problems rediscovering the foundations of its orthodoxy." Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's pointman on Catholic-Jewish relations, responded to the criticism in a Thursday morning interview on Vatican radio. He said great progress has been made in interfaith dialogue with Jews, but it requires that "we respect each other's diversity." "We have much in common, but there's a specific difference. Jesus is the Christ, that means the Messiah, the son of God, and you cannot hide this difference. The Holy Father wanted to say: Yes, Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men, including the Jews. This is said in the prayer," Kasper said. "But this does not mean we have the intention of evangelizing [Jews]. We must give witness to our faith. But in the past the language was with disrespect. Now there is respect." Huge steps forward have in fact been made since the days that Catholics blamed Jews for Jesus' death, and when the original Good Friday conversion prayer spoke of the "perfidious Jews." Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI began to rewrite Catholic teachings, paving the way for John Paul II's historic outreach to Jews, including visits to the central synagogue in Rome and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and his characterization of the People of Israel as "older brothers" to Christians.
Reached in his office in Jerusalem, Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee, a veteran of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, said that he too had his "hopes raised" that an explicit reference to conversion would have been excised. Rosen noted that the expansion of the Latin rite "had nothing to do with this prayer, and nothing to do with the Jews," but was rather an attempt by the Pope to mend fences with Catholic arch-traditionalists. Still, the language of the Good Friday prayer sounds to Jews to be "exclusivist and triumphalist," said the rabbi.
Rosen, who has worked with Benedict since he was a Vatican cardinal, said he worries that the Pope seems to "insulate" himself from top advisers who might alert him to potential fallout. Still, Rosen called his Italian rabbinical colleagues' break in dialogue with Catholics a "rash" decision. "There's so much at stake for Jews and Catholics and Benedict himself that we must ensure that this difficulty will not torpedo the commitment to advancing Jewish-Catholic relations," Rosen said. "Yes, we must speak up. But there is nothing to be gained from making this a casus belli."
Note: I don't know why people seem so surprised. Williams long ago departed from sound Christian leadership by promoting homosexual relations in the Anglican Church, causing a unrepairable schism. That he is now advocating Sharia law is only a further symtom of his deep psychosis. He said he was only for a "partial" implementation of Sharia, as though that were possible. He cited for example the relativley benign divorce laws - ones where only the husband has rights and the wife is treated as property, for example. And he said he wasn't for severe punishments (I assume he means beheading or amputation for stealing) That local Muslim leaders said they weren't even seeking such an accomdation shows how off his rocker this man is. To some extent, this works in favor of the separated brothers in the Anglican communion. The more wacky their leadership shows themselves to be, the more Anglicans return home to the true faith. If Williams wants to find common ground with Muslims, perhaps he should try enforcing Christian doctrine in the areas of divorce and human sexuality. Muslims are typically for chastity, against abortion and frown on prnography, for example.
Archbishop of Canterbury argues for Islamic law in Britain
The Archbishop of Canterbury came under fierce attack last night from the Government, his own Church and other religions after he advocated the adoption of parts of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Britain.
Leaders of all the main political parties made clear that they did not accept Dr Rowan Williams's assertion that the incorporation of some aspects of Sharia was "unavoidable".
Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, condemned his comments as "muddled and unhelpful" and one senior bishop said that he was "surprised and concerned" by Dr Williams’s remarks.
Even the Muslim Council of Britain insisted that most members of the community did not want Sharia and emphasised that it had not discussed the issue.
Dr Williams argued, in a speech at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, for a "plural jurisdiction" that would allow Muslims to choose whether some legal disputes were resolved in secular or Sharia courts. He called for "constructive accommodation" over such issues as resolving marriage disputes.
Earlier, he told BBC Radio 4 that people should approach Islamic law with an open mind. Although emphasising that there was no place for "extreme punishments" and discrimination against women, Dr Williams stressed the importance of making all communities "part of the public process" in order to limit any oppression.
There are nearly 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, representing 2.7 per cent of the total population. Sharia courts do exist, but they have no legal standing and their decisions are not binding. Dr Williams said: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Sharia are already recognised in our society."
However, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said that British law must be based on British values. "Sharia cannot be used as a justification for committing breaches of English law, nor should the principles of Sharia be included in a civil court for resolving contractual disputes," he said.
Gordon Brown's spokesman added that concessions had been made in specific instances - such as a relaxation of the law on stamp duty to avoid it being paid twice when Sharia-compliant mortgages were used by Muslims.
They involve two transfers of property, so in theory stamp duty would be payable twice, but is in fact paid only once.
The Conservative response was even stronger. Baroness Warsi, Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action said: "The Archbishop's comments are unhelpful and may add to the confusion that already exists in our communities... All British citizens must be subject to British laws developed through Parliament and the courts."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "Equality before the law is part of the glue that binds our society together. We cannot have a situation where there is one law for one person and different laws for another."
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who claimed recently that parts of Britain were no-go areas for non-Muslims, was one of the first to criticise Dr Williams. Dr Nazir-Ali, the country's only Asian bishop, said: "English law is rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and our notions of human freedoms derive from that tradition. It would be impossible to introduce a tradition like Sharia into this corpus without fundamentally affecting its integrity."
Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, a Leicester imam and an expert in interfaith issues for the Muslim Council of Britain, said his fear was that Islamophobic and racist groups would use the Archbishop's remarks to attack Islam.
He added: "I welcome debate on this issue but my personal feeling is that the vast majority of Muslims do not want to see a parallel or separate system for Muslims in our society."
Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism, said: "I am staggered he has said this. The Jewish community has learnt the value both of participating in the British legal system but at the same time, in certain matters where the State gives it the right, to sort out those matters with its own rabbinic authorities. But we accept that British law has priority."
The Archbishop's lecture was one in in a series of discussions Islam in English Law, part of the Temple Festival.
Note: The book spoke about the decline in membership in the religious orders, especially the missions as a kind of trigger for the Church to act in bringing about the final phase of God's judgment. This report, repeated in many other circles, shows what we in the west already knew, that new vocations to religious life are in steep decline and even with the increase in membership in the third world are barely keeping pace. A tipping point may soon be upon us as retirements and deaths soon overtake the remaining few.
Vatican Sees Decline in Religious Orders
VATICAN CITY (AP) - The number of men and women belonging to Roman Catholic religious orders worldwide has continued to decline but there has been an increase in priests assigned to dioceses, the Vatican said Tuesday.
The Vatican's statistics office said the total number of priests worldwide - those belonging to religious orders and those assigned to dioceses - stood at 405,000, with an increase of 600 diocesan clerics in 2006 over the previous year.
The total number of men and women in Catholic religious orders - mainly priests and nuns who belong to such orders as the Jesuits, Carmelites and the Franciscans - stood at 945,210 in 2006 - 7,230 fewer than the previous year, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini. He said an article Monday in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, had overstated the decrease.
The overwhelming majority of people in religious orders, 753,400, are women. The Vatican has long lamented a decrease in the number of priestly vocations in Europe and elsewhere in recent years, while the number of priests has increased in Africa and Asia. The Osservatore Romano report did not give a reason for the recent figures.
Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2005 speech to Italian priests that the West was "a world that is tired of its own culture, a world that has arrived at a time in which there's no more evidence of the need for God, much less Christ, and in which it seems that man alone can make himself." Mentioning Australia, Europe and the United States, the pontiff said in that speech that "one sees that the great churches appear to be dying."
Note: This ruling required the judge to state outright a falsehood - that homosexuality is inborn. Not only is that not scientifically proven but it is also in direct opposition to legal precedent. In other words, the judge lied in order to rule in favor of immorality. The Father of Lies is gaining strength.
Judge: Teaching Erotic Sex and that Homosexuality is Inborn to 8th and 10th Graders is OK
February 05, 2008
ANN ARBOR, MI - Maryland Circuit Court Judge William J. Rowan, III, ruled last week that it is permissible to teach 8th and 10th grade Montgomery County public school students how to use condoms during anal and oral sex, as well as that homosexuality is inborn, even though in 2007 Maryland's highest appellate court ruled there is no scientific basis for such a conclusion. The controversial new curriculum was adopted as a result of pressure by homosexual advocacy groups.
That sexual orientation is innate, namely, homosexuals are 'born that way,' is a theory that has been rejected by courts in several states including Maryland. Maryland's highest appellate court issued an opinion in a 2007 civil union case, holding that the proposition that homosexuality is innate is not supported by credible evidence. In fact, not one U.S. court presented with the issue has found homosexuality to be an innate characteristic.
The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which represents Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, the Family Leader Network, and the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays had asked the Judge Rowan to overturn a Maryland Board of Education ruling that approves of public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland to teaching 8th and 10th graders that homosexuals are born that way, and how to use condoms during anal and oral sex.
274 Montgomery area doctors signed a petition objecting to the curriculum which promotes the notion that the use of condoms prevents disease in anal intercourse.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center commented, "Judge Rowan's ruling gives a green light to homosexual groups throughout Maryland to pressure school boards to adopt similar policies. We will be meeting with our clients next week regarding an appeal."
Montgomery educators defended their new sex curriculum that promotes anal sex, homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestitism despite strong opposition from several pro family groups. Brandon Bolling, the Thomas More Law Center attorney who argued the case, asked Judge Rowan to either declare the curriculum illegal or send it back to the state board of education for another review. "Maryland law says that you have to teach something that is factually accurate," said Bolling. "They are not doing that, therefore it is illegal."
The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life through education, litigation, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization.
You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at www.thomasmore.org.
After reading The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation, by Steven Paul, I purchased and read the biography of St. Vincent Ferrer. He warned all Eurpoe, indeed all Christendom, of God's impending judgement unless they repented. He was "the eagle flying in midheaven" in the Book of Revelation. Sadly, his warning has been forgotten and the judgement, the final three woes, are in progress.
From The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter:
That third date comes in the last verse of Chapter 8: the "eagle" flying in "mid-heaven." An eagle flies higher than any other creature: it flies farthest away from the "earth" and, therefore, closest to the "sun." The "eagle" symbolizes the contemplative life; the one in 8:13 is a member of a contemplative order.
He is obviously delivering a prophecy of warning "to them that dwell upon the earth." Bear in mind that Christ said,
"There are many inside the Church who are outside, and many outside who are inside."
Those who are not of the Truth "dwell on the earth." Since the "eagle" is flying "in mid-heaven," his direst of warnings is directed mainly at the clergy, aye, especially, the episcopate. Like the bishop from the east in Chapter 7, this "eagle" speaks in the name of Christ, for he cries out in a loud voice, the voice of authority that he wants all to hear.
In view of the description of the fourth "wind" in verse 12, it is clear that the "eagle" is the messenger divinely appointed to deliver the last warning to the Church. If the Church does not heed the warning, then the three woes will overtake many more in their sin than the woes would otherwise. But, understand here: the woes are included in "what must soon befall" in the first verse of Chapter 1.
God knows what men will do, but He warns them anyway, so that none can say that there was no warning. Christ warned the Jews, but they, in general, did not listen. He also said,
"Offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes! Better for him had he never been born." [Mt. 18:7]
Those are strong words from Him Who created man.
Two great saints appear in the first half of the fifteenth century: the Dominican, St. Vincent Ferrer, and the Franciscan, St. Bernadine of Sienna, each a priest in a contemplative order. In 1398 AD, when St. Vincent was dying of a fever, Christ, together with St. Dominic and St. Francis, appeared to him, cured him of his fever, and commissioned him to preach that the Church must repent and do penance, or else judgment would come.
Christ did not tell St. Vincent exactly when the judgment would come or what kind it would be; but, He must have said something thereof, because St. Vincent, on countless occasions, warned that the "Day of Wrath" was to come "quickly, indeed quickly and very shortly" [cito, bene cito et valde breviter]. While preaching to a crowd in 1406, St. Vincent announced that his mantle [commission] would be handed down to someone then listening to him, and that the person would evangelize throughout Italy.
The person was St. Bernadine. The Franciscan priest often used the same words of the "eagle" in 8:13, "woe, woe, woe!", and he often threatened his listeners with the plague of locusts described in the first half of Chapter 9. He preached from 1417 until he died in 1444. Of the two men, I would say St. Vincent Ferrer was the "eagle” flying in mid-heaven" because he, and not St. Bernadine, received a special revelation from Christ Himself. So, the third approximate date is 1450 AD, at verse 13 in Chapter 8.
In the first half of Chapter 9, the fifth angel sounds the trumpet to announce the first of the three woes. This means that Christ's ONE JUDGMENT will come in three stages. The judgment will be the worst, the most terrible, that He will inflict on his Church and the world. Progressively, it will extend until it involves all mankind, and it will intensify until it culminates in the annihilation of all evil agents and agencies on the earth.
John wrote,
"...and I saw a star which had fallen to the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit..."
Here, I must end this letter, not to occasion a sense of suspense, but to rest my two fingers and 13 billion brain cells. By now, you should be able to figure out who the "star" was, and what the "key" symbolizes.
The only major event that comes after, approximately, the year 1450 AD was.... If you can't figure it out, I will tell you. Hint: the first woe is still in progress. Never again can the unique evolvement of the three woes be repeated. The judgment has already begun, and the Little Lamb shall bring it to completion, to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
Note: It seems strange to me that the way we show our love for our brothers, the Jews, is to remove the language we use to indicate our prayers that they reach the fullfilment of faith in Jesus Christ that our religion says is the path to salvation. Stranger still is that we did it due to objections by Abe Foxman, who neither speaks for the entire Jewish people nor respects Roman Catholicism as can be easily seen from his previous public statements. It seems dangerous to me to revise a liturgical formula at the insistence of someone outside our faith. It is a precedent not likely to be repeated by other faiths. Pope Benedict to reformulate Good Friday prayers for Tridentine Mass
Rabbi David Rosen
London, Feb 3, 2008 / 08:26 pm (CNA).- Pope Benedict XVI will modify the Good Friday prayers used in the Tridentine Mass that generated protests from Jewish leaders who found the prayers offensive, the Jerusalem Post reports.
In July Pope Benedict widened the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal in a "Motu Proprio" edict. This missal included Latin prayers for Good Friday that asked Catholics to "pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ," asking God not to "refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."
After the Pope permitted the wide use of the Tridentine Missal, Abraham H. Foxman, United States director of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized the prayers. In July he said he was "extremely disappointed and deeply offended" by the use of what he called "insulting anti-Jewish language" that would "now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words." According to the Jerusalem Post, Foxman said the reintroduction of the Latin prayers was a "theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations."
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel also wrote the Pope expressing concern.
In a July interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, Archbishop Angelo Amato denied the Good Friday prayers were anti-Jewish. The archbishop said Catholics pray first for their own conversion "And then we pray for the conversion of all Christians and of all non-Christians. The Gospel is for all."
On January 18 the Milan newspaper Il Giornale reported that the new text of the prayers would drop all references to the "blindness" of the Jews. The Pope has reportedly drafted a new prayer that will be released in time for Holy Week in March.
Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, told the Jerusalem Post that the removal of references to the "darkness" and the "blindness" of the Jews for refusing to recognize Jesus as the messiah was a sign Pope Benedict was "deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community."
Rabbi Rosen said the July Motu Proprio had nothing to do with Jews, saying there was confusion about the concept of conversion. "Used in the sense that Archbishop Amato uses it, it does not mean the acceptance of the Christian Faith by a non-Christian," he said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Rosen said that his Vatican sources indicated that the new text does not call for Jews to accept the Christian faith. Like a common 1970 prayer used by the Church, he said it "prays for the physical and spiritual well being of the Jews."
The Vatican would not confirm the Il Giornale report.
Note: When I saw the headline to this story I hoped it didn't mean what it said. Book Reveals Fetal Soup Served in Chinese Restaurants The Seven Sorrows of China gives heart-wrenching accounts of the brutality of China's one-child policy
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
February 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. Mark Miravalle's sobering book, The Seven Sorrows of China, gives, in heart-wrenching detail, accounts of the brutality of the one-child policy and its effects on the Chinese people.
Dr. Miravalle's account of his often intense experiences as he travels through modern China provides a disturbingly realistic picture of life outside of Beijing.
The following is an excerpt from Part III of Dr. Miravalle's book, entitled The Third Sorrow: Abortion Without Conscience: The Indoctrination of a Nation: "The most alarming," he writes, "the most depressing, the most Copernican revelation of all that I have been exposed to (including the yet more grisly examples to follow), is the repeated refrain that the great majority of the people in China have lost any concept that there is anything at all wrong with having an abortion. It is considered less significant than a flu shot, a minor procedure like going to the dentist, a simple solution to a simple problem that doesn't merit any soul searching for any alternative plans."
China has become a nation who without conscience aborts their own future generations. And this is Satan's ultimate victory here. Is this conscience loss regarding the transcendent dignity and inherent right of human life to be blamed exclusively on atheistic Communism? Have not the recent influences of Western morals of secular humanism, materialism, hedonism, and ultimately unmitigated egoism, also contributed to this Chinese terrorism of the womb? In any case, the combination amounts to self-inflicted Chinese genocide, which so saddens the God that creates and loves the ethnical uniqueness of China.
"New macabre manifestations of this conscienceless abortion mentality include the recent opening of five restaurants in the region of X, which began serving 'fetal soup' at the price of 300 Yuan (approximately $40) a bowl! Recent medical publications have praised the exceptional health benefits for the consuming of 'fetal remains' (this jargon allows them to overlook what this really is-unborn baby bodies). Therefore, local entrepreneurs jumped on the opportunity to distribute this new health breakthrough to the chosen few who could afford the price. So evil and scandalous is this fetal soup trade that the Government shut down the Web sites advertising the restaurants, in fear that they would scandalize the reputation of the People's Republic to outside countries and businesses.
"Is it possible that the abortion holocaust and its rejection of life's sacred dignity has also contributed to the recent practice of 'ghost wives,' as recently reported in Chinese news sources? This is the practice of providing a woman's dead body to be buried with a deceased man so that the man will have company in the 'next life.' Distributors of the dead bodies of women found that men were willing to pay much more for a 'new' dead body of a woman, rather than one previously preserved. Murder of women from out-of-the-way places ensued to fill the new demand for the fresh ghost wives.
"When human life in the womb is not safe, no human life is safe. How can China regain the natural law dictates of conscience that tells every human heart that it is always wrong to directly kill an innocent human being, regardless of race, religion, health, age or location, including the womb (historically man's most secure location, and now his most dangerous)? Through God, through prayer, through education, and through the witness of individual heroes, saving one person, one unborn child, at a time.
This part of the book also goes on to describe more of the process of the one-child policy:"A certificate of permission is required to have a baby in a Chinese hospital. The government tells you how many children you can have and when. In the city, married couples are limited to one child. In the farming regions a family, if the first child is a girl, can sometimes be permitted to try for a boy as a second child because of the need for boys on the farm. Even in this case, the government will control when they can try for the boy, with the requirement that it be at least five years after the first child. The Government also uses psychological pressure to keep the policy. If a couple in the country have only one child, then this child will probably be able to have two children. The policy varies from region to region.
"A couple must go to the hospital with their permission certificate to deliver their child. If they arrive at the hospital without the permission certificate, hospital officials contact the Population Police. At this point, the Police decide, based on the circumstances of the family and the history of the couple, what is to be the fate of the family. The child will be injected with poison on the spot. Or the couple will be fined and their home burnt down. Or the couple could lose their jobs, and in some cases, cause the loss of their employees' jobs (one teacher told me that if his wife didn't abort her second child, he and the school principal would both lose their jobs). One Protestant woman refused to abort her second child and lost her own job at the hospital she worked at. Still another possibility is that the child does not receive official recognition that it exists and does not receive the 'Chinese Social Security Card.' The child therefore is not technically a citizen, nor can he or she go to school or participate in any right of a citizen. One remedy is to try to find a retired and sympathetic midwife who can deliver the child at home. This saves the baby's life, but does not guarantee his registration.
Note: This "crisis" among the Bishops and clergy is one of the most striking examples of how the Church can be derailed from its mission by sin. The premise of the book is that the underlying cause of the "crisis", homosexuality, has not been dealt with and remains ready to continue its slaughter of souls through deceit and lying until the faithful no longer trust anyone in the Church hierarchy at all. This is an apostacy of immense proportions!
Paved with the Skulls of Bishops
By Richard John Neuhaus Friday, February 1, 2008, 6:54 AM
That's a grim metaphor, maybe too grim. It's from an endorsement of Philip F. Lawler's book, to be published next week, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture (Encounter). The endorsement is by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, who says: "Lawler's masterful analysis is sobering and provides an urgent incentive for authentic renewal. If St. John Chrysostom is correct when he says that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops, it would be a mistake for any bishop or priest to miss this book." Bishop Bruskewitz and Philip Lawler obviously think that Chrysostom was correct.
One might suggest that the book is really two books, one about what has happened to Catholicism in Boston and the other about the sex abuse scandal in the Church in America. Boston is the synecdoche for the telling of the much larger story. It is admittedly a very big synecdoche, but much of the book takes leave of Boston altogether in order to examine what happened and is still happening in dioceses around the country.
The account offered is devastating and the blame is clearly laid at the door of the American bishops. Lawler is outraged, but, to his credit, his outrage is controlled. His judgments are sometimes harsh, but, in view of the evidence, they could hardly be otherwise. Throughout, one senses his palpable love for the Church, his solid orthodoxy, and his yearning for spiritual and moral renewal. Lawler was long the editor of Catholic World Report and for several years, under Bernard Cardinal Law, editor of the archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot. His treatment of Law, who was compelled to resign as Archbishop of Boston in December 2002, strikes one as an exemplary exercise in trying to put the best possible construction on the indisputably indefensible.
"The thesis of this book," writes Lawler, "is that the sex abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential; to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the divine mandate." Bishops again and again responded to the crisis as institutional managers, employing public relations stratagems to evade, deceive, and distract attention from their own responsibility. Lawler several times invokes the terse observation of St. Augustine, "God does not need my lie." The bishops lied, says Lawler, and many of them are still lying. This is offered not as an accusation but as a conclusion that he believes is compelled by the evidence.
"The first aspect of the scandal, the sexual abuse of children, has been acknowledged and addressed," Lawler writes. "The second aspect, the rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests, has been acknowledged but not addressed, and later even denied... The third aspect of the scandal has never even been acknowledged by American church leaders." The third aspect, the malfeasance of bishops, "is today the most serious of all."
Over 80 percent of reported cases of abuse were with teenage boys. That does not include, of course, uncounted instances of sex with men who are of age, since those cases, as several bishops have opined, constitute no problem for the Church, meaning no legal or financial problem. Spiritual and moral problems apparently do not enter the equation. The name for this is corruption. Lawler quotes at length an article, published in 2000, before the scandal in Boston made national headlines, by Father Paul Shaughnessy:
If we examine any trust-invested agency at any given point in its history, whether that agency be a police force, a military unit, or a religious community, we might find that, say, out of every hundred men, five are scoundrels, five are heroes, and the rest are neither one nor the other: ordinarily upright men who live with a mixture of moral timidity and moral courage. When the institution is healthy, the gutsier few set the overall tone, and the less courageous but tractable majority works along with these men to minimize misbehavior; more importantly, the healthy institution is able to identify its own rotten apples and remove them before the institution itself is enfeebled. However, when an institution becomes corrupt, its guiding spirit mysteriously shifts away from the morally intrepid few, and with that shift the institution becomes more interested in protecting itself against outside critics than in tackling the problem members that subvert its mission. For example, when we say a certain police force is corrupt, we don’t usually mean that every policeman is on the take-perhaps only five out of a hundred actually accept bribes-rather we mean that this police force can no longer diagnose and cure its own problems, and consequently, if reform is to take place, an outside agency has to be brought in to make the changes.
Lawler adds: "Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of the sex abuse crisis. The corruption wrought by that influence was a more important factor." He very gingerly addresses a theory proposed by a number of commentators on the crisis, namely, that bishops engaged in cover-ups and other deceptions because they were threatened with homosexual blackmail. He cites a number of instances in which this appears to be the case and bishops were permitted to resign when their misdeeds could no longer be denied. "The blackmail hypothesis," he writes, "provides a logical explanation for behavior that is otherwise inexplicable: the bishops' willingness to risk the welfare of the faithful and their own reputations in order to protect abusive priests."
The subject of the sex abuse crisis lends itself to sensationalism, but Lawler strives to resist that temptation. His is a generally sober account of a crisis that brought to light a larger pattern of episcopal fecklessness in the Church's accommodation to, and complicity in, the forces of cultural decadence. As readers know, the sex abuse crisis-its sources and ramifications-is a subject regularly addressed in First Things. And I will likely be returning to The Faithful Departed in the magazine.
I differ with Philip Lawler on a number of points in his telling of the story. For instance, his treatment of the 1940's conflict between Father Leonard Feeney and Cardinal Cushing is, I think, too uncritical of Father Feeney. Feeney was out of line in the way he pressed the claim that only Catholics can be saved. And, despite his critique of cultural accommodationism, Lawler betrays a nostalgia for the old Boston Catholicism that has "collapsed," even though it was, in its way, a massive instance of cultural accommodation, albeit an institutionally successful instance.
Those and other caveats aside, The Faithful Departed is the best book-length treatment of the sex abuse crisis, its origins and larger implications, published to date.
