Another Voice

Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) previously known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition or more familiarly as the “Holy Office,” will be 76 on June 15th. He should have retired last year. His predecessor prefect at the CDF, Pope Benedict XVI, will be 85 on April 16th. Popes don’t retire. They just move on eternally.

In Acts of the Apostles we read about old men dreaming dreams and younger men having visions. In the international press, these days, we read about old men dreaming dreams of sanction and silence for younger visionaries.

The Former CDF Prefect, we heard in his Holy Thursday homily, doesn’t like disobedient Austrian priests looking for answers. The Current CDF Prefect, we read today, doesn’t like Irish priests who ask questions.

Gerard O’Connell, Irish journalist, reports from Rome:

“The Association of Irish Priests (ACP) – which represents about a third of all the priests in Ireland – says it is ‘disturbed’ at the silencing of Father Tony Flannery, one of its founder members. The ACP issued a press statement on the afternoon of Easter Monday, April 9, expressing its ‘extreme unease and disquiet’ at this development. Its statement came after various Irish media, including The Irish Catholic (April 5) and The Irish Times (April 9), had already reported that the Vatican had imposed the silencing.

“….Vatican Insider has learned from informed sources that in mid-March Fr. Flannery, 65, a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, popularly known as The Redemptorists, was summoned to Rome for a meeting with his Superior General, Father Michael Brehl….

“In Rome, Fr. Flannery learned that Fr.Brehl, his Canadian Superior General, had earlier been summoned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, according to sources, its prefect, Cardinal William Levada, had informed him that the CDF had concerns about the ‘orthodoxy’ of certain views expressed by Fr.Flannery in articles that he had written for the magazine Reality. The monthly magazine is published by the Irish Redemptorists, and has a circulation of around 6,500.

“In particular, the CDF was concerned about the orthodoxy of what Fr. Flannery had written regarding contraception, the possibility of married priests in Ireland, and the ordination of women as priests. The CDF also seems to have problems regarding his leadership role in the Association of Irish Priests, which today has 820 of the 3,400 Irish priests as members, and would like him to withdraw from that.

“Sources say the Superior General told Fr. Flannery that he cannot write or speak on any of the above mentioned subjects. Furthermore, he has asked the Irish priest to go to a monastery for about six weeks to pray and reflect on all this. At the end of that period, he hopes Fr. Flannery will return ‘to think with the Church’ (Sentire cum Ecclesia).

“Vatican Insider has learned too that the editor of the magazine Reality, Fr.Gerard Moloney, also a Redemptorist priest, has been instructed not to write on the above mentioned topics. Moreover, the magazine Reality has henceforth to be reviewed by a theologian before publication.

“Cardinal Levada wants the Superior General of the Redemptorists to report back to him by the end of July to assure him that Fr. Flannery’s situation has been resolved. Vatican Insider has tried to contact the Superior General to have his comments on this whole matter but he had left Rome, and could not be reached at the time of writing….

“The ACP affirmed ‘in the strongest possible terms’ its ‘confidence in and solidarity with Fr Flannery’ and stated clearly that it believed that ‘this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise….’ The ACP rejected its depiction by ‘some reactionary fringe groups’ as ‘a small coterie of radical priests with a radical agenda’ and said it has ‘protested vehemently against that unfair depiction.’

” ‘We are and we wish to remain at the very heart of the Church, committed to putting into place the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,’ the Association stated firmly.”

Pope Benedict XVI once again denounced the ordination of women and the abolition of priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church during a stern Holy Thursday address.

“All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.”

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

― Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (28 July 1844 — 8 June 1889).
English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest.

As we begin Holy Week 2012, a reflection from Bill Press, writing (29 March) in the Chicago Tribune:

“No doubt about it. On abortion, Catholic bishops are against it. On homosexuality, Catholic bishops are against it. On same-sex marriage, Catholic bishops are against it. On contraception, Catholic bishops are against it. And they actively lobby Congress to pass laws supporting their position. Recently, the Conference of Bishops even identified their top priority for 2012 as persuading Congress to overturn President Obama’s mandatory coverage of birth control in all health plans. Two years ago, they opposed passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act….

“But still, as a Catholic, what I want to know is: Why are the bishops so quick and eager to speak out about issues involving sex — yet remain totally silent on so many other established teachings of the Church?

“The Catholic Church, for example, officially opposes the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment. But when is the last time you heard the bishops decry application of the death penalty? According to the Death Penalty Information Center, as of October 2011 there were 3,199 persons on death row in the United States. Shouldn’t that also be one of the bishops’ top priorities? Yet, to my knowledge, the bishops have never denied communion to any politician who voted in support of the death penalty, though they did deny the sacraments to Geraldine Ferraro, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and other pro-choice Catholics.

“Same with the war in Iraq. Pope John Paul II was outspoken in his opposition to the Gulf War in 1991 and the war in Iraq in 2003. “War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations,” declared the pope in January 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq. But, again: American bishops never pressured Congress to vote against the war and never criticized Catholic members of Congress who eagerly voted for it.

“And what about working families? No institution has spoken out more strongly on behalf of economic justice than the Catholic Church. In his great encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII recognized the rights of workers to form unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to earn a fair salary: enough to support the worker, his wife and family, with a little savings left over. But when’s the last time you heard a Catholic bishop talk about the “living wage”?

“….How shameful, then, that bishops maintain total silence about the House Republican budget authored by Paul Ryan. This year’s Ryan budget, like last year’s, is just the opposite of what the Church teaches. It would drastically cut social programs that aid the poor, including medical care provided to the poor through Medicaid. It would also threaten health care for seniors by ending Medicare as we know it — while preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans.

“The Ryan plan, in other words, is not preferential treatment for the poor. It’s preferential treatment for the rich. But what have Catholic bishops said about it? Absolutely nothing. Not a word. Zip. Nada.”

On March 24, 1980, Bishop Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated while celebrating Eucharist in a small hospital chapel. He was my hero.

On March 27, 2004, Bishop Ken Untener, Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, died of leukemia. He was my hero and also my good friend. (And his death on March 27th at age 66 coincided with my 61st birthday.)

Oscar Romero and Ken Untener : great men and prophetic bishops.

Ken’s prayer, below, continues to inspire and motivate all who would walk in the footsteps of Romero, Untener, and the Man whose Death and Resurrection we will soon commemorate in Easter faith and hope.

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom [of God] is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realising that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

______________________________________________________

The prayer was composed by Ken Untener. He wrote it for a homily by Cardinal John Dearden in November 1979. Later, as a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Oscar Romero (24 March 1980), he included it in a reflection titled “The mystery of the Romero Prayer.”

John William Greenleaf

Understanding why the Church seems to be drifting far out at sea……

I was awakened by a vivid dream last night….A wrinkled old dinosaur, clutching a mighty crosier and crowned with a golden miter, sat perched on an iceberg drifting in the ocean. The more he roared and shook his crosier, the more the iceberg cracked and sank deeper into the icy water.

Roman Catholic leadership seems more and more like a club of old dinosaurs, caught in a clash of civilizations.

Just as we have seven sacraments, I see seven forces clashing and exploding in a dramatic confrontation that is really just beginning.

A sketch of what I see:

(1) Ongoing international sexual abuse: pedophilia, sexual use and abuse of women (often women religious) by members of the clergy, clandestine and widespread hypocritical homosexual activity by bishops and priests (even in higher Vatican circles), increased sexual repression and arrested sexual development in Pope Benedict’s reform-of-the-reform seminary programs of priestly formation.

(7) The Church can no longer control the flow of information, cannot control how people seek to discover the truth nor what they discover to be the truth, nor can the Church any longer control human thought. We are indeed free at last…….

Let’s put the dinosaurs in a museum. Or as Jesus said: Let the dead bury the dead. Let’s recommit ourselves to being contemporary followers of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Church is not dead. It just needs extensive rehabilitation…..