Blithe SpiritIt’s not as simple, apparently. Also apparently, Pope B-16 has been close to this one, and some Vatican hard-liners, relatively speaking, have been removed from the picture.
Those who think that this is the endpoint, that those in charge of the Fraternity have definitively given up on the idea of putting an end to the injustices that burden them, and of fulling restoring the Tradition of the Church to Rome, risk being disappointed in the days and weeks ahead
Very interesting.
Looks like Pius X Society declines:
(José Manuel Vidal).- There will be no return to Rome. The Superior of the Lefebvrians for Spain and Portugal, [Fr.] Juan María Montagut, will inform the faithful, after the 11 AM Mass, that the hierarchy of the SSPX, assembled in Écône, has decided to say \”no\” to the Vatican.The followers of [Abp.] Marcel Lefebvre do not return to the Roman fold. Mainly because they are not willing to accept the Second Vatican Council in all its farthermost points.
In Italy, says Nicholas Farrell, in Taki’s Magazine,
Catholics and fascists are both keen on intervention by totalitarian higher bodies such as the state in both life and work, and they are hostile to individual freedom and the free market.
And maybe not only there, if there. It goes with my tentative observations in the past about the church and political freedom — here, for instance:
I have in mind [when discussing "backward thinking"] the American church’s ambivalence toward governmental interference in people’s lives.
In 1919, for instance, Monsignor John A. Ryan issued the Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction, a virtual blueprint for the New Deal.
For 20 years [Ryan] reigned supreme as the bishops’ spokesman on social and political matters, even endorsing Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 for his second term. In the years since then, leading up to the bishops’ acquiescence in the passage of Obama care, official Catholic statements have consistently favored liberal positions in regard to governmental interference.
More recently, of course, they have objected to the HHS requirement that Catholic schools and hospitals offer birth control, but it took such an obvious interference in church activity to get them to do so.
The church has not been a champion of political freedom (I tentatively reiterate), being overly concerned about the mistakes and bad things people can commit and insufficiently confident or at least trustful when it comes to use by them of God-given (by whom else, pray tell?) free will, not to mention reliance on divine grace, mercy, and all that.
Is this where libertarianism meets Divine Providence? Just asking.
Who will rid me of these troublesome bishops? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This Notre Dame alum blogging at The Weekly Standard says a stand-off between Obama and the Catholic bishops on the HHS mandate “may not be good for either side.”
He gives an instance, “the disastrous situation of the president sending bishops to jail for being faithful witnesses to their religious convictions.”
I’d say he’s on to something.
Later, from an informed source, an alternate scenario:
The bishops and obama go head to head — the bishops blowing steam — and Catholics (some) getting all revved up for months. Then, just before the election — a week — Obama caves on HHS and Catholics are relieved to relax and get off their soap boxes.
They watch the bishops on TV kiss and make up profusely to Obama — photo op all’round, conciliatory quotes from Obama, and it’s practically an endorsement just before casting their ballots. You know nothing would make many of these bishops happier…to be assured they’d get the rest of Obamacare initiated.
As the poor lad legendarily told Shoeless Joe, say it ain’t so.
SSPX Mass in St. Jude's Church, Philadelphia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The way things used to be.
Natl Catholic Register’s Pat Archbold welcomes the Society of St. Pius X people’s expected return from the wilderness of papal interdict, but sees no promise of a rose garden in that return:
Bringing the SSPX back into the fold is a great thing for the souls involved and I think that they will help be an example to others. But their integration will be very painful, very. So if this really happens as it appears it will, let us rejoice. But let us also be realistic. The gates of hell will never prevail, we have the Lord’s promise on that. But in the meantime, things may even get worse before they get better. But at least now we will have some really good people bearing it with us.
He refers to those returning, and they would rightly scoff at the wilderness motif. Rather, it’s a return to the big, bad world of what Archbold neatly terms 1965-2012 Catholicism. I have heard their priests (not all) rail against the contemporary church, more often in support of strict practice in faith and morals and liturgical practice.
They and their flock are not going gentle into that good night, as they see it, of this era. But they are third-generation pre-1965 Catholics, firm in all they espouse, and will more likely rage against the dying of the light, as they see it, of this era. Catholics will continue to live in interesting times.
More: At the same time, keep in mind that the SSPX leadership calls this “a stage and not a conclusion” of return. Which they would, of course.
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Wheeling Intelligencer presents the Bishop Bransfield story, earlier part of a Phila. Inquirer story, in the starkest of terms:
PHILADELPHIA- A man testified Wednesday in a clergy abuse trial that a priest raped him in the 1970s at a beach house owned by the Most Rev. Michael J. Bransfield and that he was told that Bransfield, who currently serves as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, also sexually abused a boy.
The 48-year-old man also testified that he saw Bransfield with a car full of boys at a farm owned by his accused abuser, the Rev. Stanley Gana. The witness said that Gana told him Bransfield was having sex with the boy who was in the front seat.
Another man has testified that Bransfield had a lewd conversation with him.
The testimony came at the trial of the Rev. James Brennan, who’s accused in a 1996 child-sex assault.
Bransfield has not been charged, nor has he ever been charged, the Intelligencer reports. Nor accused, as far as a monitoring of his history on the Internet can tell us.
The Wheeling diocese is withholding comment until “the facts and issues surrounding this testimony are made fully known to the Diocese,” except to urge Catholics “to remember all victims of sexual abuse and to pray for them and their families” and to dismiss the trial itself as a “circus” and part of a smear campaign by prosecutors.
“They seem to want to bludgeon witnesses, smear individuals not on trial, anything to bolster their persecution of the church,” the diocese said in a separate statement. “The trial appears to be evolving into a circus with no rules and boundaries.”
Apparently at issue is the appearance at the trial as a material witness of a Wheeling priest, Monsignor Kevin Quirk, rector of the cathedral. A local judge is expected to rule tomorrow (4/20) whether Monsignor Quirk is required to testify.
Fr. Pfleger’s executive assistant objects to the arrival at the St. Sabina rectory of the new priest.
“Can you just imagine somebody moving into your house that really was not invited by us,” said Kimberly Lymore, the Associate Minister at the Faith Community of St. Sabina.
She’s been misled. It’s not her house, nor the parish council’s. That matter was decided a long time ago, when “trusteeism” was squelched in the American church by Rome.
Trusteeism controversy
ca. 18151840
In its infancy, the Catholic Church in America relied on the initiative and benevolence of laypeople to an extraordinary degree. Lacking priests, many early parishes were established and managed by laity. As the nation grew and the clerical personnel of the Church increased, priests and bishops sought to standardize the Church’s organization in accord with canon law and common practice. The result in some localities was tensionand sometimes hostilitybetween pastors and bishops on one side and lay trustees on the other. Significant battles over control of parishes occurred at St. Mary’s in Philadelphia and in New York, among other places.
Indeed, there is little new under the sun when it comes to the Roman church, periodic clerical chutzpah notwithstanding.
Letter to S-T:
Dear Editor:
Bob McClory’s argument for keeping Fr. Pfleger at St. Sabina parish limps in several respects.
First, it’s Bob’s own credentials for limiting Cardinal George’s authority in this case, Bob being an enthusiastic proponent of new limitations on bishops’ authority in general. Indeed, the Pfleger case fits his predilection for espousing radical change in the church.
Second, he (rightly) praises Pfleger’s pastoral availability to the bereaved and suffering — a combination of high profile achieved by Pfleger himself and Pfleger’s abundant empathy. But nothing in his transfer from St. Sabina would interfere with that, even work as president of a high school. He could be equally available to bereaved and badly treated people.
Third, he says the cardinal has handled this badly, to which I ask, Pfleger hasn’t?
— Jim Bowman
Cover via Amazon
Trust me, this girl has something to say. Last night at Dominican U’s Siena Center (a most rewarding venue), for instance:
* Hooking up is hard to do. That is, most girls and boys find it stressful and unrewarding, as even boys admitted to her as a sort of mother confessor on her way to surveying sex on campus. They do it because it’s de rigueur. It’s also efficient, as it gets sex out of the way in the middle of a student’s busy day.
* Her “most painful” interviews, of the hundreds she did face to face after getting thousands of takers for online q&a about students’ personal experiences, were with the boys (men) who spoke of the social pressure they feel to have lots to brag about.
* She acquires info not as bloodless sociologist but as an apparently exceedingly well put-together young woman — Catholic out of Georgetown and (Ph.D.) Catholic U — who refs easily to her mother in her grave and father who had or have usual queasiness about candor in the sex area who has in mind some sort of solution to students’ problems.
* As neither priest nor male nor bloodless sociologist — at the podium she is a boffo performer — she can learn things and say things that no priest could say, except maybe while bending the rules as a pastoral performer. Such as: Catholic Church has three things to say about sex that students know about: don’t do it, no condoms, no being gay. Wherefore she says, to get a “conversation” going, leave that out of it and get to the extreme discomfort most are feeling, who know self-destructive behavior when they experience it and feel awful about it.
Her book is Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses (Oxford).
And do not hold it against her that she is good-looking. Handsome is as handsome does here: she does handsomely.
Donna Freitas
