So you know that UGLY statue of John Paul II they have outside Rome's main train termnal?
You know, the one that looks like this . . . ?
The artist who designed it is now blaming the foundry that executed his design and saying that they're going to fix it.
I'm not holding my breath.
That’s a very good question, isn’t it?
How many times during the course of various sex abuse news cycles have we read about lawyers using various legal maneuvers to try to keep official, confidential documents pertaining to priestly sex abuses cases out of the hands of courts?
These instances only reveal what scoundrels both the lawyers are—*and* their clients. I mean, the *only* reason to try to keep a document out of the court’s hands is if you have something to hide, and that shows that you are acting in bad faith, trying to stop justice from being done.
Consider this story on the web site of the National Catholic Register (*not* Reporter):
SNAP director may be forced to testify in abuse case
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The leading advocacy group for child victims of clergy sex abuse may be compelled to turn over 23 years of internal documents, correspondence and email to the attorneys of an accused priest unless Missouri state courts act to quash a court-ordered deposition.
David Clohessy, head of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, has been ordered to appear for deposition in a county court case involving allegations of sexual misconduct against Kansas City diocesan priest Fr. Michael Tierney.
Victims’ advocates say if Clohessy is compelled to appear, it could have wide-ranging impact on the ability of victims of clergy sex abuse to identify their accusers and tell their stories without revealing their names in public.
A law professor noted for her decades of work with clergy sex abuse victims said the “end result” of Clohessy’s deposition would be “a huge chilling effect on helping child sex abuse victims at every stage.”
Also at stake is the confidentiality of emails between reporters and victims’ advocates that may reveal sensitive information and names of sources. In a court filing, the Missouri Press Association said Clohessy’s deposition would “eviscerate the free-press guarantee” of journalists.
On December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Archbishop Charles Chaput, the newly-installed archbishop of Philadelphia, released a pastoral letter to the faithful of his archdiocese. It will be read this weekend at Masses, even as Archbishop Chaput is returning home from his ad limina visit to Rome.
A copy of the letter was obtained by Whispers in the Loggia and has now been published online.
Pastoral letters from bishops can range from being “ho-hum” letters to being “Wham!” letters. Archbishop Chaput’s is definitely at the “Wham!” end of the spectrum.
Let’s read it together.
The letter begins with the kind of gentle, winning tone that one would expect in a pastoral letter from a newly-installed bishop:
December 8, 2011
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Dear friends in Christ,Exactly three months ago, on September 8, I was installed as Archbishop of Philadelphia. In the weeks since, traveling the archdiocese, I’ve been struck by two things I encounter again and again: the reservoir of good will in our people, and the fidelity of our priests.
The Church in Southeastern Pennsylvania has deep roots and an extraordinary legacy of saints, service and public witness. These are profound strengths, built by the faith of generations of Catholic families. But all of these good facts depend on our willingness to sustain them by our actions in the present. Advent is a season of self-examination in the light of God’s word; a season of conversion and looking forward in hope to the birth of a Savior at Christmas. There is no better time to speak frankly about the conditions we now face as a community of believers.
So far the letter has the kind of tone that might set one up for a “ho-hum” pastoral letter. But now it pivots—suddently and dramatically—and signals an entirely new direction:
Back on November 10, well-respected Vaticanista Sandro Magister reported:
Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller summit convened in the secretariat of state was doing damage control on the latest of many moments of confusion in the Roman curia.
In the hot seat was the document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the pontifical council for justice and peace. A document that had disturbed many, inside and outside of the Vatican.
The secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last moment. And precisely for this reason he had called that meeting in the secretariat of state.
The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on, nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized by the secretariat of state.
The PCJP document was indeed a subject of controversy. For example, some, such as the astute Mark Brumley, pointed out the difficulties that would be involved in implementing its proposals.
In anticipation of and in response to the controversy, I tried to provide some perspective to help people situate it in the overall scheme of things, including whether or not it represented an act of the Magisterium.
Magister’s piece on the document was widely hailed in the blogosphere and viewed as an indication that the document had caused a secret, closed-door Vatican smackdown.
I thought about blogging on the topic at the time, but I wanted to wait and see how the story matured.
The Register recently asked me to do a post on what I saw at Mass this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday using the new translation of the Roman Missal.
Happy to oblige! So here’s what happened . . .
I arrived at Mass a few minutes early and took my seat in the pew. The particular parish I was attending had not done a lot of prep work for the new translation.
In fact, I saw that the Roman Missal they had was still in its shiny, new shrinkwrap.
And behold, there were seven seals upon its shrinkwrap.
I heard the cantor proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the Missal and break its seals?”
And no one in the parish was able to open the Missal or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was able to open the Missal, for I was really looking forward to the new translation.
Then the pastor said, “Weep not. This will only take a moment.”
According to FOX News:
Irish songstress Sinead O’Connor came under fire a few weeks ago when she took to Twitter to announce that she would perform a “bloodbath” if Pope Benedict XVI visited Ireland.
“Young people of Ireland I love u’ said Sinead as she pulled the [f**king] trigger,” the artist tweeted, referencing the famous words of John Paul II, which he uttered in his 1979 pilgrimage to Ireland.
Okay, the offense meter just maxed out the scale.
But O’Connor is changing her tune, insisting that her words were all in innocent humor.
I’ll bet she is. I’ve got one word for you, Sinead: “NOT FUNNY.”
In an article headlined Obama: God backs jobs plan, AFP is reporting:
The president rebuked the House of Representatives for passing a bill reaffirming the US motto “In God We Trust” rather than getting to work on his stalled $447 billion jobs program.
“That’s not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work,” the president said.
Hmmm. Think he went to far in that?
Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney denied that Obama had perhaps gone too far by dragging the Almighty into a fierce political spat.
Well, okay then.
“I believe that the phrase from the Bible is ‘the Lord helps those who help themselves,’” Carney said.
Um, no. It's actually not from the Bible.
That’s what could happen on a legal theory articulated by the Obama administration—and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were quick to pick up on the fact.
The case at hand involves a Lutheran minister, but the principles potentially apply to the issue of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church.
Specifically, the case involves a woman who served in a teaching capacity that her Lutheran body considers ministerial. Problems arose with her position because she suffers from narcolepsy, and she threatened to file a complaint with the state under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was then let go because the Lutheran body she works for holds that an in-house dispute resolution process should have been used rather than involving the state.
They apparently have a fairly strict interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, where St. Paul warns against lawsuits among believers, saying that such disputes should be settled within the Christian community rather than using the secular courts because of the scandal this creates. The Catholic Church recognizes the principles used in this passage but would apply them within a larger, natural law framework that would not result in an absolute prohibition. The scandal caused by Christians suing each other in secular court in a country like America today is not nearly the same as it would have been in St. Paul’s day, when Christians were a tiny minority. Operating in a “Scripture only” manner that does not have the same natural law heritage, however, it’s easy to see how a Lutheran group might take St. Paul as being more absolute than he is.
Whatever one may think of the group’s view regarding dispute resolution and going to court, it seems like this is precisely the kind of thing that the First Amendment would protect. The federal government should not be in the business of telling churches who they must or must not have as ministers. Such an intervention would violate the free exercise of religion.
Right?
Not according to the Obama administration.
You know that thuggish contraception policy that President Obama’s administration recently proposed as part of their implementation of ObamaCare?
The one whose public comment period ended last Friday?
The one that the U.S. bishops were frantically trying to get Catholics to contact Health and Human Services and oppose?
The one that the bishops’ attorneys said “represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty”?
The one that they also said involves a mandate that is “unprecedented in federal law and more radical than any state contraceptive mandate enacted to date”?
The one that would require many Catholic agencies to stop offering insurance to their employees because it would require their insurance policies to cover contraception?
The one that would force countless Catholics to buy insurance plans that fund contraception?
Yeah, that’s the one.
You know what?
President Obama is really proud of it!
Here’s an exchange that took place at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in St. Louis on Tuesday, according to the official White House transcript:
So the California state fire marshall has decreed that a certain kind of gas pump handle latch can no longer be used and, instead of allowing the stations that use it to have time to get replacements, they must all remove them at once!
This is, in theory, supposed to be for safety reasons and prevent gas spills or something.
Personally, I suspect that this will actually result in a more dangerous situation as people try improvised solutions to the problem.
Like this one . . .
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