How to become Pope (video)

Is the Vatican Imploding?

From the National Catholic Reporter:

The Vatican is undergoing a historic "implosion," according to Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for The Tablet, published in Britain. In a November speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Mickens said we are "viewing the collapse of an entire system, structure, ethos and culture, the crumbling of what is close to an absolute monarchy as ever existed and certainly the last absolute monarchy in the West."
...
Here are some of the signs of implosion he discussed: the bitter fights for promotion, the corruption, the cronyism among bishops and cardinals, as revealed in the Vatileaks scandal; the ongoing parade of Catholics out of the church; the relentless decrease of priests with the accompanying mergers and closings of parishes in the Western world. 

A major sign and also a cause of the implosion, Mickens said, is the "cleric-centered" organization of the church, which leads inevitably to "clericalism." He sees a definite "resurgence" of clericalism, calling it "a cancer," spreading especially among the younger clergy.... 

The only solution is structural change, Mickens said...

Well, then.

How would the Episcopal Church handle it?

As you probably know, Andrew Sullivan is a conservative pundit who is also a gay Catholic. He's been following the sex abuse scandal with some dismay (read his column, I believe you've killed the Church, Holy Father.)

Over on his blog, he quotes letters from readers (here and here) noting examples of more rapid response from Episcopal Church authorities when cases have come to light.

Institutions move slowly by nature, and I'm sure there are times when TEC has moved more slowly than it should. But in the letters to Andrew Sullivan, the lesson is clear: moving quickly, and (importantly) keeping the people informed, salves and ultimately helps heal the wounds.

The real tragedy for the Roman Catholic Church is not the crime itself. Abusers can occur anywhere. No, the real tragedy is the endless coverup and the stench of corruption it engenders. Ultimately, the ongoing coverup has done far more damage to the Church than any exposure of the original crimes could have. And no amount of Vatican spinning will deflect it.

Update My further discussion of the abuse scandal on my post at Street Prophets

Pope calls gay marriage an "attack"

From Reuters

:Pope Benedict on Tuesday linked the Church's opposition to gay marriage to concern about the environment, suggesting that laws undermining "the differences between the sexes" were threats to creation.....

"Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes," he said.

"I am thinking, for example, of certain countries in Europe or North and South America," he said.

This was a clear reference to legislation either enacted or proposed in several part of the world.

Last month, Mexico City became the first capital in Catholic Latin America to allow same-sex marriage.

In California, the U.S. state's ban on gay marriage goes to trial on Monday in a federal case that plaintiffs hope to take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and overturn bans throughout the nation.

Gay marriage is legal is several U.S. states and some European countries.

Abp Williams stands up to Pope

From the Times of London:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has mounted a direct challenge to the Roman Catholic Church's stance against the ordination of women priests.

In a speech in Rome today, he made clear there could be no turning back of the clock on women priests to appease the Pope, the Catholic Church or malcontents in the Church of England.

He dismissed the Pope's plan to welcome disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church as little more than a "pastoral response" which broke little new ground in relations between the two churches.....

He damningly described the papal decree which outlined norms for a new Anglican Ordinariate to allow Anglicans to convert to Rome as creating a "chaplaincy" rather than a church.....

And in a significant departure from Anglican polity, he did not apologise for the ordination of women priests, the development in 1992 that derailed progress towards full unity between the two churches. Instead, he issued a direct challenge to the Catholic prohibition on women's ordination and said that refusing to ordain women could not enhance a Church communion.

"For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women," he said.

The Anglican provinces that now ordained women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism, he said.

Acknowledging the divisions in the Anglican Communion, he said that the way Anglican leaders were dealing with division and dissent held its own lessons for Catholics. "Is it nonsense to think that holding on to a limited but real common life and mutual acknowledgement of integrity might be worth working for within the Anglican family? And if it can be managed within the Anglican family, is this a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene?"

h/T Mad Priest

Conservative Catholic group criticizes Vatican

From the WaPo:

We now know that the reaction of right-wing Catholics to Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama falls into the category of "more Catholic than the pope."

To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called "a surprisingly positive assessment of the new president's approach to life issues" -- so positive, in fact, that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee was moved to criticize Pope Benedict XVI's daily.....

The article will strengthen the liberal claim that the Catholic right's over-the-top response is rooted at least as much in Republican and conservative politics as in concern over the abortion question.....

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that two-thirds of Catholics approved of Obama's performance in office. .....Largely lost in the Notre Dame furor is the extent to which the ferocity on the Catholic right has emboldened moderate and liberal Catholics to fight back.

About time the social justice Catholics stepped back up for their views. Bill Donohue should be recognized as an aberration, not a spokesman. In America, "The Catholic Weekly", an oped says,

The divisive effects of the new American sectarians have not escaped the notice of the Vatican. Their highly partisan political edge has become a matter of concern. That they never demonstrate the same high dudgeon at the compromises, unfulfilled promises and policy disagreements with Republican politicians as with Democratic ones is plain for all to see. It is time to call this one-sided denunciation by its proper name: political partisanship.....

.... church leaders must promote the primacy of charity among Catholics who advocate different political options. For as the council declared, “The bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything which divides them” (“Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” No. 92).

As an observer of Christianity,however, I have seen precious little example of that in any denomination!

The Pope and Britney Spears

What do they have in common?

"Whoops, I did it again!"

From USA Today:

The Vatican announced Saturday that the Pope has tapped the Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, to be auxiliary bishop in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria province. Wagner caused a stir in 2005 when he was quoted as saying that he was convinced that the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina earlier that year was "divine retribution" for tolerance of homosexuals and laid-back sexual attitudes in New Orleans.

So, within the space of one week, we get a holocaust denier and a cleric who sounds more like fudamentalist (and notorious anti-Catholic)James Hagee:

Pastor John Hagee...told NPR’s Terry Gross that “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” Hagee said, because “there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.”

Now, say what you will about the Roman Catholics, but you don't generally expect fundamentalist hyperbole to this extent from the RC. Back to this new Papal appointment (same cite as above)

Upper Austria Governor Josef Puehringer also weighed in, describing Wagner as a "very conservative cleric" and telling broadcaster ORF that the pick suggests the Vatican does not have a realistic picture of the diocese.

Kath.Net, a Catholic news agency in Austria, released in 2005 excerpts of what it said were comments Wagner made in a parish newsletter in Linz about Katrina.

It said the newsletter quoted Wagner as saying that Katrina destroyed not only nightclubs and brothels in New Orleans, but also abortion clinics.

"The conditions of immorality in this city are indescribable," Wagner was quoted as saying.

Shouldn't someone in the Vatican clue Il Papa into the effects his tin ear is having on the reputation of the church?

Catholic follies

Pope Benedict XVI calls homosexuality a "tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."

Pope John Paul II said that homosexuaity is an “ideology of evil,” and when discussing gay marriage said that, “It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.”"

Pope Benedict has now reversed the ex-communication of a group of far-right schistmatic Bishops, one of whom is a Holocaust denier.

the move came just days after one of the four, British Bishop Richard Williamson, was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed."

My marriage harms no one, but the Pope considers us an "ideology of evil", while this man who endorses evil and excuses one of the greatest horrors of the modern world is "redeemable".

Go figure.