Bishops Without Chest

 “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” —C.S. Lewis

 I'm looking at you Bishops. Not just Bishop Gregory, but all of you. Well, I will except a few.

Mona Faulkner, Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Fresno, Thinks Tim Gordan is Racist

Until recently, Tim was a theology teacher at a Catholic high school. Between his two books, his podcast, and his full-time job as a teacher, Gordon was able to support his family and the expansive medical needs of his daughter.

His daughter, who had been suffering from relentless bouts of seizures, recently underwent a hemispherectomy, a rare form of neurosurgery in which a large portion of one of the brain’s hemispheres is removed. It is an expensive procedure, and Tim was fortunate to have insurance from the Catholic high school that employed him to defray some of those expenses.

 

Members of that high-school community emailed Tim, wishing his daughter well during the surgery. They prayed for her on the morning announcements. But after Tim said something unfashionable about Black Lives Matter in public, his employment at the school was swiftly terminated. No longer covered by the school’s insurance, his daughter’s expensive recovery would have to be financed out-of-pocket.

Gordon, on his Twitter account, referred to Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization. Perhaps you agree with that assessment, and perhaps you don’t. But in either case, that Gordon — a devoted teacher, husband, and father — should be fired from his job at a Catholic high school for airing his opinion on that question is absurd. That he was fired not long after his daughter’s brain surgery borders on cruelty, and certainly raises questions about the Catholic identity of the school that employed him.

About Timothy J. Gordon

Timothy J. Gordon studied philosophy in Pontifical graduate universities in Europe, taught it at Southern Californian community colleges, and then went on to law school. He holds degrees in literature, history, philosophy, and law. Currently, he resides in central California with his wife and five children, where he writes and teaches philosophy and theology. He is the author of Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish without Rome (Sophia Institute Press, 2019).

Cardinal O'Malley Thinks Father Moloney is a Racist

 The Archbishop of Boston asked the Chaplain to resign, and he did. See if you can find out why - because I coulldn't figure it out.

 

[Editor’s Note:  Below is the text of an email message that Father Daniel Moloney, the Catholic chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sent to Catholics at the university (a group known as the Tech Catholic Community, or TCC) on Sunday, June 7, 2020.  Two days later, the Archdiocese of Boston forced him to resign because of it.

 

Like most colleges, M.I.T. has not been in session on campus since March because of the coronavirus emergency, which is why Father Moloney mentions early in the email message that he is unable to preach.

 

The text is unedited, except for certain identifying information that is omitted.  The links are from the original email message.]

 

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From: Daniel P Moloney <[EMAIL ADDRESS OMITTED]> Date: June 7, 2020 at 6:01:06 AM EDT To: tccm <[EMAIL ADDRESS OMITTED]> Subject: [TCCM] Blessed are the peacemakers

My brothers and sisters in Christ,
It pains me not to be able to preach at a time like this. The Gospel says one thing, and everyone else is saying partial truths, at most. George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn’t have been. He had not lived a virtuous life. He was convicted of several crimes, including armed robbery, which he seems to have committed to feed his drug habit. And he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest. But we do not kill such people. He committed sins, but we root for sinners to change their lives and convert to the Gospel. Catholics want all life protected from conception until natural death. The police officer who knelt on his neck until he died acted wrongly. I do not know what he was thinking. The charges filed against him allege dangerous negligence, but say nothing about his state of mind. He might have killed George Floyd intentionally, or not. He hasn’t told us. But he showed disregard for his life, and we cannot accept that in our law enforcement officers. It is right that he has been arrested and will be prosecuted.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that. Police officers deal with dangerous and bad people all the time, and that often hardens them. They do this so that the rest of us can live in peace, but sometimes at a cost to their souls. Some of them certainly develop attitudes towards the people they investigate and arrest that are unjust and sinful. We should pray that never happens, but we can see how it does. Many parts of our country have been experiencing a five-year crime wave, providing some context for why the police are trained in aggressive tactics. In 2019, 150 police officers were killed in the line of duty by the violent men they were trying to arrest. That number should be zero, we can all agree. But that context does not justify being overly aggressive — their public trust requires that they exercise great restraint. Criminals have human dignity, too. That’s why we Catholics are asked to work to abolish the death penalty in this country.
 
Today tensions are high, with charges of racism flying over social media, and countercharges of agreeing with domestic terrorists flying back. People are unfriending and cancelling each other. I hate this. Racism is a sin, as the Catechism says (#1937). So is rash judgment (#2478). Solidarity with our fellow human beings is “a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood… sealed by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross to his heavenly Father, on behalf of sinful humanity.” (#1939). Our solidarity with one another is deeply frayed now. Everything we say (or don’t say) is treated with suspicion, rather than charity.  I hate this too. I’ve talked to multiple people in the Boston area who want the protests here to stop because they are afraid of more riots and looting. I’ve talked to others who want everyone to join the protests, but are uneasy about having police present. One group says that, of course racism is bad, but the riots are really bad — 18 people have been killed, including one police officer. Others say racism is what’s really bad — look at all the victims of police aggression — and to bring up the riots is to distract from the good the protests are trying to achieve. Still others are upset that all this talk about racism has pushed violence against women, institutionalized sexism, and other types of injustice out of the national consciousness. Everyone’s mind is made up, everyone’s angry with each other — even though everyone says they’re opposed to injustices and sins. In a different moment, people strongly opposed to public violence, racism, and sexism would admire each other, despite their different emphases.
 
Cardinal Sean has released two statements, one a week ago and one on Friday. I wrote something that, were we able to celebrate Mass together, might have been my homily for this week, a week which saw the feast of the Ugandan martyrs bookended by the Solemnities of Pentecost and The Holy Trinity. Members of the TCC have decided to append the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to the weekly Zoom rosary on Fridays, to pray for God’s “mercy on us and on the whole world.” The problems we face are the result of sin, as I said above. And the only way to conquer sin is with prayer, grace, and holiness, by which the Holy Spirit brings us more deeply into Christ’s New Covenant with the Father.
Blessed are the peacemakers, our Lord tells us. May we all be counted among them.
 
Fr. Daniel Patrick Moloney, Ph.D.
Catholic Chaplain, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Author of the new book, Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know
[OFFICE ADDRESS OMITTED]
Cambridge, MA 02139
[CELL PHONE NUMBER OMITTED]
[EMAIL ADDRESS OMITTED] http://tcc.mit.edu
blog: spiritualdi

Catholic Bishops Still Think You Are a Racist

CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 10:00 am MT (CNA).- As police reform legislation is currently stuck in the Senate, leading U.S. bishops wrote members of Congress on Wednesday outlining Catholic principles of policing.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington, and Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux sent a joint letter to members of Congress on Wednesday “in the wake of the terrible and unjust killing of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and so many more.”

While many might wish for peace during the present unrest, there can be no true peace without justice, the bishops said.

“When protesters shout, ‘No justice, no peace,’ perhaps without realizing it, they are paraphrasing an axiom of the Church,” the letter said. “A police force that is accountable to its highest standards – discipline, self-control, mercy, and the recognition that every person is made in the image of God – can promote justice and thus bring about peace.” 

Racism, the bishops wrote on Wednesday, “remains a problem in the criminal justice system.”
They cited previous letters by the conference on the matter, drawing attention to disproportionately harsh treatment of people of color by police or the fear of many in the African-American community of interactions with police officers given the number of police killings of African-Americans.

Maryland Bishops Think You're A Racist

CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2020 / 02:50 pm MT (CNA).- The Catholic Church should be at the forefront of efforts to address racial inequality – not only through words, but through actions, said the bishops of Maryland on Monday.

In a June 15 letter, the Maryland bishops said “we must seek to know and understand one another and to work to break down barriers through listening, prayer and a commitment to change hearts and minds.”

“With regret and humility, we must recognize that as Catholic leaders and as an institution we have, at times, not followed the Gospel to which we profess and have been too slow in correcting our shortcomings,” they said.

“For this reason, it is incumbent upon us to place ourselves at the forefront of efforts to remove the inequalities and discrimination that are still present in Maryland and our nation today.”

The Flaming Hypocrisy of an Archbishop

Wilton Gregory, Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., apparently did not check with the St. Pope John Paul II National Shrine before blasting the president's visit to the Catholic site on Tuesday as "reprehensible."

As it turned out, President Donald Trump's visit to the shrine was meant as a "lead in" to something he did later in the day, which was very much in accord with the mission of the shrine honoring the late Pope (1978-2005) who was made a saint in 2013 — the signing of an executive order to advance international religious freedom.

As the president and first lady approached the shrine in Washington, Gregory's office issued a statement saying he found it "baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be egregiously misused and manipulated in a way that violates our religious principles that call us to defend the rights of all people — even those with whom we might disagree."

This has politics written all over it.  While bishop of Atlanta, he invited James Martin to give a lecture about welcoming LGBTQs to the Church, and alllowed the Cathedral to be used as a center for LGBTQ events.

Then there's this....


“The Archdiocese of Atlanta has been blessed with a generous gift through the kindness of Joe Mitchell,” Archbishop Wilton Gregory, then of Atlanta said Aug. 16, 2012.

“This gift is a reservoir of the funds earned through the genius of Margaret Mitchell and her depiction of the harsh struggles of Southern life during and after the Civil War.

New Bishop for St. Louis

Vatican City, Jun 10, 2020 / 05:15 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis appointed Wednesday Bishop Mitchell Rozanski to lead the Metropolitan Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Rozanski, 61, is the current Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts, where he has served since 2014. He succeeds Archbishop Robert Carlson, who presented his resignation to Pope Francis at the age of 75.

                                                        He looks like Buddy Hackett...

A Baltimore native, Rozanski was born in 1958, and attended Catholic schools in the city. He attended seminary at the Catholic University of America, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1984. He served in parish ministry, the archdiocesan curia, and with its seminary, and was named a monsignor in 2003.

Pope John Paul II appointed Rozanski as auxiliary bishop of Baltimore in 2004. He oversaw one of Baltimore archdiocese’s geographical vicariates while parishes were merged, and served as vicar for Hispanics. He was vocal in supporting Maryland’s DREAM act, allowing some undocumented immigrants to receive in-state college tuition.

Stupid on Stilts

 Bishop Wilton Gregory channels St. Pope John Paul II the Great. The Jews have a word for it...CHUTZPAH.

 Bishop Gregory, with no evidence, makes this an issue of race - then condones the destruction of private property by thugs. The same thugs that vandalized St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. 

Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory had some harsh words for President Trump and his visit Tuesday to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine: “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.” 

“Saint Pope John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth. He certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace,” the archbishop said in a statement. 

Trump visited the shrine earlier Tuesday, accompanied by his wife, First Lady Melania Trump.

On Sunday, Gregory said, “In astonishment, we are seeing the reactions of people across the United States as they express feelings of frustration, hurt, and anger in their cry for justice for George Floyd, whom we painfully watched being suffocated in front of our eyes on video in Minneapolis, Minn. this past week. Many of us remember similar incidents in our history that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement, where we repeatedly saw black Americans viciously brutalized by police.”

We Should Give This a Try

LOS ANGELES, CA—Religious people in Southern California have found a bold, creative solution for in-person meetings in spite of the continuing lockdown. This past weekend, several area churches attended church services disguised as righteously indignant rioters.
"We already have the righteous indignation thing down," said one church elder. "Now, we've simply added black balaclavas, hoodies, Guy Fawkes masks, and baseball bats! We found that when we do this, we can meet in large groups without much interference from the local authorities. It's been a delightful experience."   

Leaders from Spirit-River In The City Church in LA County are reporting a successful Sunday service after using this method. Churchgoers were given bricks and fake Molotov cocktails before they surrounded the church with menacing looks on their faces. Several deacons then smashed some church windows to make the riot look more realistic. Unfortunately, onlookers grew suspicious when the massive group of rioters broke out into a round of the smash-hit worship song "Reckless Life Engulfment." Some of the attendees were forced to stage brawls in order to keep up appearances. 

According to sources, some churchgoers in the area are planning to continue wearing masks to church even after the lockdown has ended in order to hide their identities from Hollywood directors and producers.