The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 78

The choice is this...pick one. Are you stupid or a liar? Actually, you could be a little of both.

Seattle, Wash., Aug 30, 2019 / 11:44 am (CNA).- A priest who was photographed blessing a man who planned to commit suicide said Friday that he was unaware of the man’s intentions, and that if he had known what the man was planning, he would have acted differently.

 “I believe that life is a gift. I believe that it is a gift from God and an opportunity every day to learn from God and love as God is trying to teach us to love though scriptures and the examples of Christ and the saints. I feel terrible that there is an insinuation that I, or a member of the clergy or religious order or this archdiocese, would think otherwise or would make a public statement otherwise,” Fr. Quentin Dupont, SJ, told America magazine Aug. 30.

 Members of the St Therese parish community were aware of Fuller’s plans at the May 5. He had by then announced that his funeral would be held at the parish May 17 and arranged for a parish choir to perform at the “end-of-life” party he threw in the hours before his suicide.
Dupont, however, told America that he was not told of those plans when he arrived at the parish May 5.
“I arrived at church and I saw a parishioner there and I asked how he was doing. He said, ‘Well, this is Bob Fuller’s last Mass,’ and I was puzzled and so I asked him what he meant. He said, ‘Well, Bob is going to die.’ I didn’t know much about Mr. Fuller. I knew he was very ill and I thought that meant that his treatment had run out, that he was getting off treatment and that Mr. Fuller knew he had days to live. And I continued my way to the sacristy and I met another couple of parishioners who said likewise, that this was Bob’s last Mass. Through those conversations, I became aware that this man that I knew was very ill would like a blessing.”
“So we talked about doing a blessing at the end of Mass. We had Mass and at the end of Mass we blessed him.”
“I thought the pastoral situation I was walking into was with this very ill man who knows he’s about to die. I wanted to make sure he felt cared for by the church.”
Dupont said that he knew a television camera was at the May 5 Mass “because Bob was there. I didn’t probe what story they were writing. I thought they were making a story about this man who was facing great health difficulties and who had a life of faith, which I assumed was an interesting story to tell in a day and age which is heavily secularized.”

Can Tatoos Be Sacramentals?

 The CNA asks the important questions!

I'm not a Canon Lawyer, but I think I know the answer - NO.

Hey! I'm right!

Ed Peter's Responds

The existence of the devil as a personal reality, and not merely as a symbol of evil, is an article of faith (Ott, Fundamentals 126-131; CCC 395, 2851). Denial of an article of faith is an element of the canonical crime of heresy (1983 CIC 751), an act punishable by measures up to and including excommunication, dismissal from the clerical state, and/or loss of ecclesiastical office (1983 CIC 1364, 194).
Rev. Arturo Sosa, sj, superior general of the Society of Jesus, denies the personal reality of the devil, describes him instead as a symbol of evil, and has expressed such views before (CNA article here, Catholic Herald article here). Protestations of Sosa’s orthodoxy by Jesuit spokesmen notwithstanding, Sosa speaks for himself, and clearly. I think his remarks warrant response, not just from bloggers and scholars, but from those placed in authority over such matters.
There are, I grant, some practical problems: the term “heresy” has been thrown around too loosely for some decades (perhaps for some centuries), the sanctions of excommunication and removal from office are themselves very weighty, and the latae sententiae (automatic) procedures by which such consequences are supposedly visited upon offenders are controversial in theory and practice, such that few in ecclesiastical leadership (including most orthodox members thereof!) wish to “pull the trigger” in such cases and, as a result, utterances such as Sosa’s provoke little, usually no, response from Church leaders with inevitable harm to the faithful.

I Like The Jesuits

Father Z writes:

I am getting really sick of Jesuits.

My sincere apologies and condolences to those men of the Society of Jesus who are sound and faithful, good sons of Ignatius. It is my esteem for what I know the Society has been and could be that pushes me to pick on you. But you guys have to start policing your own. Otherwise, more and more people will be praying for another Clement XIV.

The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 77

Vatican City, Aug 21, 2019 / 01:44 pm (CNA).- The superior general of the Society of Jesus said Aug. 21 that the devil is a symbol, but not a person.

The devil, “exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because is not a person, is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life,” Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, said Wednesday in an interview with Italian magazine Tempi. 
 
“Good and evil are in a permanent war in the human conscience and we have ways to point them out. We recognize God as good, fully good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality,” he added.

Sosa’s remarks came after he participated in a panel discussion at a Catholic gathering in Rimini, Italy, organized by the Communion and Liberation ecclesial movement.

Satan Ponders His Non-Personhood

The Catechism of the Catholic teaches that “Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.’”

Angels, the Catechism says, are “spiritual, non-corporeal beings.” 

 They are personal and immortal creatures,” it adds, who “have intelligence and will.”


Sosa has offered controversial comments about Satan in the past. In 2017, he told El Mundo that “we have formed symbolic figures such as the Devil to express evil.”

After his 2017 remark generated controversy, a spokesman for Sosa told the Catholic Herald that “like all Catholics, Father Sosa professes and teaches what the Church professes and teaches. He does not hold a set of beliefs separate from what is contained in the doctrine of the Catholic Church.”

Dante Is Going To Need Another Level of Hell

PORTLAND, Oregon, August 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – So-called “progressive” worshippers at a Catholic parish in Portland, Oregon, shouted down an African priest celebrating Mass who had tried to bring his congregation more in line with Catholic teaching.

Fr. George Kuforiji, a native of Nigeria, was just commencing the celebration of the Mass on June 20 at St. Francis of Assisi parish when he was interrupted by elderly parishioners wearing white and bearing protest signs. The loud, grey-haired protesters filed into the central aisle and marched forward while Fr. Kuforiji tried to continue the celebration from behind the altar. Some banged tambourines or shook rattles in the church.

An amateur video recorded parishioner Melissa Pittman, who held a large photograph above her head that she displayed to the congregation as she protested: "We are following the voice of Jesus, of love. Jesus of inclusion. Jesus of resisting the authorities because when we resist the law, we are in the Spirit of God." At least one member responded with an “Amen!”

Pittman then went to the pulpit to air grievances against Archbishop Alexander Sample and Fr. Kuforiji. "I have asked Father for dialogue; I said that for the last year," she said. "We have been wanting real dialogue. I said that we are being abused." Continuing her harangue, Pittman said, "We are being abused in the Catholic Church by this priest and by this archbishop."

The video also shows that one man responded to Pittman with a “boo.” He then gestured to Fr. Kuforiji, who had retired to the back of the church, and said, "This is a holy priest." However, the protesters shouted him down. 
The video showed several of the mostly female parishioners confronting Fr. Kuforiji at the back of the church. One woman approached him and said, "How can you be a priest? I've been here for over 15 years. You've been here a year." 
Fr. Kuforiji responded: “Do you have reverence for God?” as the woman turned her back on him in apparent disgust. Finally, the protesters ended their disruption of the liturgy by locking arms and singing the Civil Rights-era anthem, "We Shall Overcome." 

According to a report in The Oregonian, members of the parish council and other parishioners questioned Fr. Kuforiji’s leadership and reforms. One of his innovations was to ban “inclusive language” in Scriptural readings used in the parished. His predecessors had avoided references to God as “Lord,” “king,” or “he.” Other reforms that Fr. Kuforiji introduced when he took over the parish in 2018 was to remove a hand-woven Guatemalan cloth that had been used on the altar, replacing it with a plain white altar cloth as prescribed for use in the Catholic Church. 
Fr. Kuforiji also removed photographs of supposed homeless people that had decorated the interior walls of the church. He had discarded some of the photographs, as well as vestments that previous priests had used, into a trailer.

Among the items discarded was a cloth decorated with rainbow colors.

Saints and Italians Need Not Apply

New York City, N.Y., Aug 19, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- A New York City public arts program has said it will not build a statue in honor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, despite the saint receiving the most nominations in a public poll. 

She Built NYC was established in June of 2018 under the patronage of Chirlane McCray, wife of New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, to create more statues of women around the city of New York. The public were asked to nominate women for a potential statue and the campaign received over 2,000 votes for over 300 eligible women.

The results of the nominating period were published in December, with Mother Cabrini receiving 219 nominations - more than double the number received by second-place finisher, Jane Jacobs. 
Despite the public vote, the New York Post reported on Aug. 10 that the selection committee, led by McCray and former New York deputy mayor Alicia Glen, had excluded the first American saint from the planned statutes, instead choosing to honor Rep. Shirley Chisolm, Katherine Walker, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Billie Holiday, and Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias. They received the third, fifth, seventh, 19th, 22nd, 24th and 42nd-most nominations, respectively.  

LGBT rights activists Johnson and Rivera were biological males and will be featured together in a single statue. Both were self-identified “drag queens” and co-founders of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The pair received a combined 86 nominations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Billie Holiday died from drinking herself to death, and was arrested on her death bed for narcotics posession.

I'm surprised Margaret Sanger didn't get any votes. 

The Trouble with Jesuits, Part 76

I don't know where to start with this one, but it's from Father Z, and features our old pal, Jesuit James Martin. He praises a lecture by some woman who has a title with the word religious in it. 

Rock on, James!

My favorite part (I was Lector today, so I get it), is this...

Going on, she likens the image of the woman and child in Revelation, threatened by the dragon.  To protect the child the woman must flee, just like all the immigrant mothers who must flee to protect their children.  (I am not making this up… this is what the Jesuit thinks we need!)

You can go to the link, but I couldn't get through the lecture. It was nutty. Except if you think like a Jesuit.

I Can Say The Act of Contrition...But They Changed the Words!

 From John Hirschauer at National Review:


Mahatma Gandhi is often reported to have said something like: If Catholics really believed that God Himself were present in the Eucharist, they would crawl toward the altar on their stomachs. Long pants and a collared shirt would be a start.

The Catholic Mass, delicately constructed over the centuries and gradually ornamented with what the late Michael Davies called liturgical “accretions,” was rebuilt wholesale in the 1960s at Vatican Council II to better include (as if they had ever been excluded) The People.

The scene at the consecration in Novus Ordo Parish, USA in Year of Our Lord 2019 astounds in its portability. It proceeds like a ritual of perfect disregard: Father Bob, in the name of anti-clericalism, conscripts a lay army of “extraordinary ministers” to distribute the Host in their Sunday Mediocrities (Barb’s jeans and white blouse will no doubt suffice for Sunday brunch at the country club after Mass). Jan, Susan, Barb, and Gregg ascend the altar without genuflection or bow — this is The People’s house! — as Father Bob hands them what would, in a faraway time, be considered the Body and Blood of Christ. But this is The People’s feast, and the greatest threat to their unity as such is the One who brings not peace, but a sword.

No swords in The People’s house.

  

Like clockwork, The People (save one or two holdouts burdened by their “rigid” doctrinal formation) line up for Communion. Five of them — six, if you count the priest — have been to confession in the last calendar year, and one — priest inclusive — can recite the Act of Contrition without visual aid. Some third-rate hymn written in 1994 is played on the acoustic guitar in the background as one by one, the Blessed Sacrament is transferred from one unconsecrated hand to another. The Prince of Peace has been tried and found divisive; they’ll take peace instead. All the while, the Church continues Her interminable “dialogue” with modernity and her princes: pluralism, The Market, conscience, Patriarch Bartholomew, feminism, Pride &c. 

Seventy percent of Catholics, per Pew Research’s latest figures, don’t believe in the Real Presence. Why are you surprised?

Fredo's Brother, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Claims to be Catholic

 Of course, Cuomo was "educated" at Fordham University...a Jesuit school.



 From "The Catholic Thing". Read it all.


The eight Catholic dioceses of New York are bracing themselves against a flood of lawsuits over clerical sexual abuse. A new law, known as the Child Victims Act, was passed early this year and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in February. Among the provisions of the new law is a one-year “look-back window,” during which civil cases that had passed the statute of limitations can be revived.

That window opened yesterday, August 14.

New civil suits are being filed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, more are expected to be filed in the coming weeks and months. (I just Googled “Child Victims Act” and the first four results are advertisements for trial lawyers with offices in New York.)

Given the increased liability for the Catholic Church – and the fact that the bishops of New York trust Governor Cuomo about as far as they can throw him – you might suspect that the bishops would be opposed to the new law. And they were. Or rather, they were opposed to earlier versions of the law, and had been for years. But they withdrew their opposition in late January, just before the bill was passed.

As the bishops said in a statement at the time, “The legislation now recognizes that child sexual abuse is an evil not just limited to one institution, but a tragic societal ill that must be addressed in every place where it exists.”

So what changed? The Catholic bishops wanted several changes in the bill. They hoped to see the statute of limitations dropped entirely for criminal sex-abuse cases; the law merely extends them (along with statutes of limitations in civil cases). The bishops were also reluctant to support the look-back window, for obvious reasons. But they either had a change of heart on that point – or saw the writing on the wall. The real sticking point was a loophole that would have left public institutions – in particular, public schools – largely immune to the kind of exposure non-public institutions (like the Catholic Church) would face under the new law.
New York law requires that a “notice of claim” be filed by a victim before proceeding in a civil claim against a public institution. If that “notice of claim” isn’t filed within 90 days, the suit can’t proceed. The result was that victims of child sexual abuse had just 90 days to decide to take civil action against state and municipal institutions, including public schools.
For years, bishops around the country have insisted that legislation that lifts, or retroactively extends, statutes of limitations for civil suits in child sex-abuse cases ought not single-out the Catholic Church. The Child Victims Act removes the “notice of claim” loophole for cases involving the sexual abuse of minors, both new cases and those that might be brought during the look-back window. When that language was changed in the proposed bill, the Catholic bishops dropped their objections.

Father David Bonnar Bravely Turns His Tail and Flees

There are hundreds of Catholic deer hunters in Allegheny County. I'm pretty sure security could be provided.


Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug 13, 2019 / 08:56 am (CNA).- A Pennsylvania parish has cancelled a scheduled festival in response to a security threat received by the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

In an Aug. 13 statement, the diocese said that in late July it received a “disturbing,” handwritten letter that said “Cancel August 14-17 Festival Security Problem is Huge.” 

Our Lady of Grace Parish in Scott Township, a Pittsburgh suburb, was the only diocesan parish scheduled to hold a festival Aug. 14-17.

“Although there was no direct threat, the letter raised grave concern due to the appalling chain of mass violence that our nation has experienced. Father David Bonnar, the priest-administrator, was immediately notified, and he immediately notified law enforcement. The sender has not been identified, so Father Bonnar announced today, with deep regret, that the festival has been canceled,” the diocesan statement said.

The annual festival is a significant source of revenue for the parish. 

“The loss of income to Our Lady of Grace Parish and School, and to vendors who were scheduled to work at the festival, pales in comparison to the loss of lives in Dayton, El Paso, Squirrel Hill and too many other places. The diocese supports the decision not to risk becoming another name in that tragic litany. But we mourn the loss of carefree community that should be the hallmark of these joyous events,” the diocese said.

The parish is located less than 15 miles from Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, at which a gunman killed 11 people while shouting anti-Semitic slurs Oct. 27.

“As we are all devastated by this morning’s massacre at Tree of Life Congregation, my heart and prayers are especially lifted up for our Jewish sisters and brothers and the law enforcement officers who rushed into harm’s way,” Pittsburgh’s Bishop David Zubik said after that shooting.

“May God free us from fear and hatred, and sow peace in our lives, our communities, and in the world,” the bishop added.

I'm Looking at You,Bishop Cupich

READ THE WHOLE THING!



Up on the Rock of Cashel in Ireland, there is the ruin of a bishop’s stronghold. Someone once said to me there: “They always take care of themselves.” They were the bishops. At the time of the apostles, bishops were poor and lived risky lives. Yet with the Edict of Milan (313), bishops became state officials as well, controlling lands and towns and provinces. They gained civil dignities and stipends. They were barons and lords.
Nothing in the way they were originally constituted said that they ought to behave in this way. They went along with the culture instead of witnessing to it.  Not all bishops do this, but enough do to make their rate of consumption and longing for class a problem for the Church’s presence in the world.
Bishop’s residences can be a huge problem. Again, some live in modest houses, but for the rest, the houses are a massive counter-witness to the official work of the Church. The Church is a witnessing body. It is a series of corporations for legal purposes. More importantly, the Church is fundamentally a witness of Jesus Christ in the world. Which does not entail having lots of money or a higher social status.
Theologically, the problem is that the bishop is bound by the material parameters of Jesus Christ’s own life. It is simply not possible to witness credibly to Jesus Christ while living a life significantly richer than Jesus Christ – unless the message of the Church is a mere commodity. Living the life of Christ is personal in the sense that it engages the whole person, body and soul. Every aspect of the individual’s existence is supposed to manifest Christ. This applies to priests, too, but that is a subject for another time.
Armani suits or expensive hobbies demonstrate the individual bishop’s reliance on material things rather than his reliance on the Spirit. It could also suggest one’s imagined superiority over the people around or one’s fitting in with the upper class.

Yet Another Bishop With Courage! They Inspire Me!

The dancers soar across the church aisles and the altar, embrace as they spin and cover each other in blue and red chalk. They do this after opening video clips of homophobic protests and violence have flashed across the screen. All of this accompanied by a recording of Jeff Buckley’s popular song, Hallelujah. Near the end the two men share a brief kiss.  The final image is a large banner they create that reads ‘Choose Love,’ raised high over a backdrop of stained glass.
This dance performance video, entitled Hallelujah, was set and filmed in Quebec’s historic Church of St. Pierre Apôtre. Its a queer love story produced by Matthew Richardson–and the church leaders were happy to host it.

 “They welcomed me, my message, and our creation with open arms,” said Richardson,the show’s creator and  a former Cirque Du Soleil performer. Hallelujah is one of five dances he will direct as part of his CircusQueer Project. The video is deeply intimate in a deeply Catholic setting. In a review by the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News (SDGLN), dancers Guillaume Paquin and Arthur Morel Van Hyfte are described as “only [the] heart” of the video, while, “the church [is] its body, taking on perhaps the most important role in the video: an example of inclusivity through servanthood.”

The Bishop of Montreal.

Christian Lépine (French pronunciation: ​[kʁistjɑ̃ lepin]); born 18 September 1951) has been Archbishop of Montreal since 20 March 2012.
 
Before entering the seminary, Lépine studied at the Collège Militaire Royal de St-Jean and École Polytechnique de Montréal. He was ordained a priest on 7 September 1983. He studied theology at the Université de Montréal and philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1986 to 1989.^[3] He served as secretary to Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte from 1996 until going in 1998 to work at the Secretariat of State and later at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. From 2001 to 2006 he was a member of the formation staff of the major seminary in Montreal, before becoming pastor of Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Purification-de-la-Vierge-Marie-Bienheureuse. 

In the autumn of 2009, his parish of Notre-Dame-des-Champs became the centre of a media controversy after they hosted a session for parents on how to instill an integrated sexual identity in their children. The then-Fr. Lépine had to cancel the last two sessions of the series after homosexual activists threatened to protest.
 
On 11 July 2011, he was named Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal and Titular Bishop of Zabi, and on 10 September he was consecrated by Cardinal Turcotte. He served as Episcopal Vicar to Family and Youth.
 
On 20 March 2012, less than a year later, he was appointed to succeed Cardinal Turcotte, who had reached the age of retirement the previous year, and at an 8 a.m. meeting of the College of Consultors on the same day he took canonical possession of the see. A public installation took place on 27 April 2012.

Over to You, Bishop Cupich!

 Washington D.C., Aug 4, 2019 / 02:46 pm (CNA).- U.S. bishops are calling for prayer and action in the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio this weekend. 

 “We encourage all Catholics to increased prayer and sacrifice for healing and the end of these shootings,” the bishops wrote in an Aug. 4 statement. “We encourage Catholics to pray and raise their voices for needed changes to our national policy and national culture as well.”

“The lives lost this weekend confront us with a terrible truth,” bishops wrote. “We can never again believe that mass shootings are an isolated exception.”

“They are an epidemic against life that we must, in justice, face.”

  From the dictionary:

Definition of epidemic (Entry 2 of 2)

1 : an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time : an outbreak of epidemic disease

2 : an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development an epidemic of bankruptcies

In Chicago, 1,517 people have been shot this year. That is 129 fewer than 2018.

GUILTY Until Proven Innocent

Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug 5, 2019 / 08:30 am (CNA).- An auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and member of the USCCB committee on child protection, is facing accusations that he failed to report to Cincinnati’s archbishop a series of allegations that a priest had engaged in inappropriate behavior with teenage boys.

After CNA presented its investigation to the archdiocese, a spokesperson said that Bishop Joseph R. Binzer would be removed from his position as head of priest personnel, effective immediately, while the archdiocese begins its own internal investigation.

The archdiocese has not removed Binzer, 64, from his post as archdiocesan vicar general, a position of authority second only to the archbishop. Binzer is also a member of the U.S. bishops’ conference committee for the protection of children and young people.

Binzer could face further disciplinary action by Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr, and is likely to undergo a formal investigation under the provisions of Vos estis lux mundi, a recently promulgated policy for dealing with bishops who fail to properly handle allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct.

That sounds horrible! But...

 
At the time, the complaint was forwarded to Butler County authorities, who found no evidence of criminal behavior.