Instead of “fish on Friday” we’ll enjoy “film on Friday” courtesy of You Tube. Clips might be funny, outrageous, silly, strange or provovative.
That We Would Be Heard includes the love story of two Catholic lesbians who went to a retreat looking for peace, and came away with one another. One of the women, Molly, speaks out about the church:
“I don’t understand how the church can continue to close their ears to the stories and the lives and the experience of people who are gay and lesbian and bisexual.”
See the video here.
Jason Berry, the renowned Catholic journalist who wrote a groundbreaking investigative report on a priest abuser in New Orleans in 1985, hoped that his findings would lead to reform in the Catholic church. He made his book, Vows of Silence, into a film. It’s now available on DVD.
It chronicles the history of Father Marcial Maciel, who won the favor of Pope John Paul II despite years of pedophilia accusations. The greatest fundraiser of the modern church, Maciel founded the Legionnaires of Christ, a religious order with a $650 million dollar budget and history of controversial tactics.
The film tracks 1998 abuse charges against Maciel filed with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, tried to abort the case. In 2004, with Pope John Paul dying, Ratzinger takes action.
Vows of Silence documents the church’s coverup as well as Maciel’s predatory trail of seeking out and abusing young men and youths aspiring to the priesthood. While John Paul II refused to investigate the allegations, then Cardinal Ratzinger took up the investigation. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow through, citing Maciel’s age.
Berry interviewed former members of the order and used the Maciel saga as a metaphor for the larger sex abuse crisis in the Catholic church. Berry rightly points out that the real culprit in the priest sex abuse crisis are the bishops who are not held accountable for their refusal to act against priests who abuse children and teenagers.
Former Legionary and 1984 Marquette alumnus, Christopher Kuzne, said Legionary members who were victims of sexual abuse didn’t readily come forward because initiation into the order required them to vow they would not speak against superiors and report any who did. Kuzne said rumors suggest that Pope Benedict eradicated that vow, but there has been no public statement from the Vatican or the order.
Back when I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my Congressional representative was a young man with a good future. His name was Vito Fossella, and he was known as a staunch family values conservative. He voted against gay marriage and for posting the Ten Commandments in public places. Fossella and his wife had three children. She was a stay-at-home mom, and they were communicants at St. Clare’s Church on Staten Island. Staten Island is home to many socially conservative Catholics, so Fossella was a perfect fit.
On May 1, 2008, he was arrested for drunk driving, and his life totally unraveled. It turns out he was on the way to visit his second family. 
Fossella had fathered a three-year-old daughter with Laura Fay, a former Air Force colonel The Republican congressman was a regular visitor to Fay’s tidy townhouse - taking strolls around the Alexandria, VA neighborhood with his second family like any other dad in apple-pie America.
Fossella met the mother of his love child during a Congressional junket. She isn’t a stranger to adultery herself–her first husband divorced her for running around; with the second they both had outside affairs.
Now, let’s examine his record on preserving “the sanctity of marriage.”
In 2004, Fossella voted for the Marriage Protection Act, which essentially would have prevented courts from striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That bill passed the House by a vote of 233-194 and later died in the Senate.
Later in the same month in 2004, , Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have amended the U.S. Constitution to explicitly ban marriages for same-sex couples in any part of the United States. It would have been the first time that discrimination was to be enshrined in the Constitution. That bill passed the House by a vote of 236-187 and later died in the Senate.
In 2006, Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, make it the third time he chose to stand up and firmly deny same-sex couples the thousands of rights and protections that come with a federal and state marriage license.
I find it interesting that Fossella had such strong feelings about an institution that apparently didn’t have much meaning to him in the end.
“I have a theory that all addiction is, at bottom, a search for God. Think about it: the blackout–a crude form of mystical union; the willingness to sacrifice reputation, family, money, health, one’s very life–a twisted martyrdom. Sometimes I think anyone as drawn as I am to suffering would have to become a Catholic,” King writes.
“Maybe God uses even our illnesses, our compulsions, the defects we can’t fix no matter how hard we try, for the greater good. As for the wounds other people inflict upon us–maybe he uses those most of all.”
King reminds us that “when Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection, he still bore the wounds. One of the things this seems to say is that our suffering counts.”
King articulated the spiritual dimenson of addiction perfectly.
I am still in a quantry if Catholics are drawn to suffering or if we are just accustomed to it; thanks to ever-present crucifixes, tales of saints meeting grusome ends with praise, not screams; and scary stories of the eternal torment and pain of Hell or Purgatory if saving grace slips through our fingers.
Suffering can make us compassionate, but it can also make us cruel and manipulative. Some sufferers use their suffering to lash out at the world and cause pain to other people, especially those close to them.
I am intrigued by her statement that Christ’s wounds survived the Resurrection. Perhaps our wounds help define who we are, both in this world and the next. What comes in through them, as well as what goes out of us.
Manila Archbishop Caudencio Cardinal Rosales scolded members of one parish for allowing gay men dressed as female saints and queens to participate in the Santacruzan processional.
He added the incident prompted him to issue a letter saying that any parish or chapel that will use gays in a procession honoring the Virgin Mary will not be allowed to have Mass.
The Philippines observes the Flores de Mayo festival every May. The highlight of the celebration is the Santacruzan, a procession that features beautifully dressed young women portraying queens and women religious figures from the past.
Santacruzan recalls the search for the Holy Cross by Queen Helena and her newly converted son Emperor Constantine the Great. They found it in Jerusalem and brought it to Rome to joyous thanksgiving.
“We should keep sacred what is sacred,” Cardinal Rosales said as he admonished parishes now to allow gay men to play Saint Helena and other female roles traditionally given to local beauty queens.
“The procession is religious. (But) what the parishes do is organize a parade. That’s an insult to the Blessed Mother. Instead of pious young women, gay men are paraded, which makes (the procession) ridiculous,” he added.
Danton Remoto, a professor at Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University, and head of the LGBT rights group, Ang Ladlad, said many gay participants were low-income people who had spent for expensive gowns they would wear in the procession “out of the goodness and love in their hearts for the Virgin Mary.”
Remoto went on to say “In the eyes of God, everyone is equal. Some of these gay men have saved a lot of money for their gowns and they were doing it because they believed in the Virgin Mary. They need understanding, not condemnation.” “There is really no intention to malign the Catholic Church,” he added.
Cardinal Rosales dismissed the charges of discrimination against individuals with “homosexual inclinations.” “I’m not angry at gay men. But, I am against what they’re actually doing.”
What’s that, I wonder? Having sex with each other, or dressing up as the Virgin Mary and St. Helena and parading down the main street? The Cardinal wasn’t specific about what he was against.
I have mixed feelings about cross-dressing gay men participating in the procession:
Can’t we have religious events in which the leading female roles are limited to women? It seems to me to be arrogant and disrespectful for these men to assume women should step aside for them to participate–especially if it is to turn a religious procession into a drag show.
However, I also feel that if these men are compelled by faith to witness to the roles these female figures played in their religion, then I feel they should be welcomed to participate as such.
The Most Rev. Geoffrey James Robinson, former Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Australia, will be making a stop near my home during his upcoming book tour. I want to go meet him, buy the book, shake his hand and thank him. I also want to be in the presence of someone whose faith is so important–so pure and strong–that they will face anything to proclaim it. To me, that will be the closest I’ll probably ever get to someone who is like the old-time saints.
Bishop Robinson headed the Australian bishops’ committee that developed guidelines and procedures for dealing with clergy sex abuse. He retired in 2004 when, he said, the burden of his “profound reservations” about the church he loved became too strong to be ignored. Actually, what he found, and the response of the church to the sex abuse crisis, made him sick.
In November 2007 he emerged from retirement to promote his new book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” and to demand a better church.
Robinson says the church–especially the hierarchy in Rome–must tackle the twin problems of sex abuse and power.
In the book, he writes that the church has not confronted the sex abuse crisis; it’s simply managing it. He blames the late John Paul II, in particular, for failing to exercise the leadership demanded by the sex abuse crisis, allowing it instead to ravage the church.
He criticizes the church’s teaching on sex and sexuality, which are based on offences against God, as outmoded and inadequate. He suggests a sexuality morality based on human relationships.
Bishop Robinson told the National Catholic Reporter that he sees a fractured church with a major division between the “proclaimers of certainties and the seekers after truth,” with the proclaimers of certainties seeming to be in the favored position.
“This has left many people feeling a sense of alienation, of being marginalized, of no longer quite belonging to the church that had given them much of their sense of belonging, meaning and direction throughout their lives.”
“In writing the book I became aware that I was writing a book for these people, that I was trying to tell them that there is a church for them and that it is fully in accord with the mind of Jesus. I was telling them that there are basic certainties, but there is also abundant room for search, for taking personal responsibility and growing through that process to become all we are capable of being, all God wants us to be.”
“I became aware that it was important for many that there should be a bishop saying these things. At moments I felt that the needs of these many people were so great that it is perhaps true that I have never been more of a shepherd. I have never been more justified in carrying around a pastoral staff than I have in this.”
25 years before he was named bishop of Belleville in southern Illinois, Fr. Edward K. Braxton wrote a book titled The Wisdom Community: A Framework and a Program for Renewing Communication and Understanding Between Priests, Bishops, Theologians and the People in the Pews.
Bishop Braxton needs to sit down and reread his book. Right now.
The pastoral crisis in Belleville, where communication has broken down during the three years of Braxton’s leadership, is such that on April 17, the third day of Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit, a quarter-page ad appeared in USA Today asking the pope to remove Braxton. The ad was written and paid for by Frank S. Ladner, 81, a Catholic philanthropist from Lawrenceville, Illinois.
A few weeks earlier, 46 Belleville priests, representing about half of the active diocesan priests, took the unusual step of signing a letter of no-confidence, urging Braxton to resign.
In the March 14th statement, the priests said that “because of the bishops lack of cooperation, consultation, accountability and transparency, it is the judgement of a great number of the presbyterate that he has lost his moral authority to lead and govern our diocese.”
In February the regional superior of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order that has served in Belleville for 138 years, wrote to the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, urging him to “use all the power of your office to create a moment of change.” Citing “an unraveling of both trust and hope,” Sr. Jen Renz, the regional superior, said, “The climate of secrecy that surrounds committee meetings and actions within the diocese must end.”
In his defense, it appears Bishop Braxton wasn’t welcome in Belleville. Appointed by a dying Pope John Paul II, there was no consultation of anyone in the diocese, so there was a pot of resentment from the start. It would have taken someone with considerable people skills to overcome this rocky beginning, and Braxton doesn’t appear to have a lot of political or management smarts.
He has been accused of being monarchial. This could be just a slap by detractors. However, one small action seems to illustrate the point very well. 
Kelly Casey of Belleville noted that Braxton brought the old, ornate president’s chair out of the cathedral museum when he came, reinstalled it in the sanctuary and raised its height twice to better express his episcopal dignity. It’s the sort of thing that turns people off, said Casey.
Ann Hartner, a leader of FOSIL (Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity), a church reform group critical of Braxton, said she hoped the priests’ bold action would inspire priests in other dioceses to take action against tyrannical bishops. “In a sense, we hope Braxton stays,” she said. “He’s empowered us to take ownership.”
The Catholic church, if nothing else, is a believer in fresh starts. One is needed in Belleville.
There was a major push this past Lent for people to go to confession, now called the milder, “Sacrament of Reconciliation.” I’m not sure how many people followed through on this appeal, since the concepts of sin and priestly authority to forgive it have lost so much credibility in the last four decades, especially from the sex abuse crisis of the 90s, and the uncovering of the hypocrisy of so many influential religious figures.
In a survey released on April 13th by CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, only 2% of Catholics said they participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation once a month or more; and 45% say they never make a sacramental confession. 62% of Catholics agree “somewhat” or “strongly” with the statement, “I can be a good Catholic without celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation at least once a year.”
One of the reasons I hesitated in going to confession is that I wondered if the promotion of this sacrament now was primarily a push to restore power and authority to priests. The other is that I was unsure of the sacrament itself–surely it can’t be the same recital of mortal and venial sins we did as kids. It had to be deeper, more adult–an event, a circumstance of life, belief or time we kept silent in the face of abuse or injustice that makes us feel alone and unloved, or ashamed, or sad or angry. But how to approach this reconciliation was never articulated.
If people think they have to confess using birth control, or getting a divorce and remarrying, or making love with a member of their own sex within a commited relationship or without; then the light on the confessional door will remain off. People are not going to give up loving relationships or sex. These two things are the barriers for many Catholics to enter a confessional–because they cannot reconcile themselves to living without love, and human warmth and intimacy.
Bishop George Lucas of Springfield, Illinois authored a pastoral letter on the sacrament of reconciliation that I found to be gentle and sincere. I appreciated him touching directly on the the hurts and estrangement that sex abuse victims, women who have had abortions, divorced and remarried people, women who feel barred from priestly ministry, and what gay and lesbian Catholics, hear and feel from their church.
His is not a positive message of hope by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a hand of welcome. We don’t have to accept what he has to say as truth, or strive for change less, but I believe when a hand is extended in a genuine wish for contact, we should take the risk and extend ours, too. 
The entire pastoral letter is worth reading. His specific comments on gay and lesbian Catholics follow:
“Homosexual persons may feel that there is no place for them in the Catholic Church. Church teaching about homosexual orientation and practices may seem harsh, particularly as voices in modern culture wrongly portray those teachings as designed to deprive persons of their rights. I want any homosexual person to know that the Catholic Church supports your human dignity, wants to accept you as a full member and offers you the same share in the life of God’s grace enjoyed by all the baptised.”
“It is my responsbility to affirm the teaching of Jesus that calls each of us to live chastely, according to our state in life. The call to chaste living is challenging for many in our culture. It can be a particular challenge for persons with a homosexual orientation who cannot look forward to a chaste sexual partnership within the context of married life.”
“This challenge is not experienced only within the Catholic community. We see other Christian communities suffering fracture because of the struggle to be true to Gospel teaching, to preserve the traditional teaching of God’s design for marriage and to respect the true human rights of all. In the face of these challenges, I offer my prayful acceptance and support to homosexual persons who wish to live as full members of the church. I offer my encouragment as well to count on the grace of God to sustain your desire to come to full stature in Christ.”
Young Women & Catholicism is a blog by two young Catholic women at Harvard Divinity School “who think women our age (18-35) have something important to say about Catholicism.”
“Our hope is that women from a range of perspectives and backgrounds will grapple with questions about Catholic identity in their writing–growing up Catholic, racial and ethnic identity intertwined with Catholic identity, Catholic relationship with the body, Catholic feminism, Catholic activism, coming out in Catholicism, Catholic-inspired art.”
I hope their “anthology of memoirs” ultimately helps them to build a good, strong network of future theologians, writers, activists, parish leaders; and maybe even someday, women priests.
It isn’t necessary for members of this group to be friends or like everyone the same, but treat each other as respected colleagues, as individual women who are bringing their own unique contribution to Catholic faith, thought and practice to the world.
I also pray that unlike some Catholic womens’ groups I have been involved with, the members can challenge one another: hold differing opinions, speak passionately, and be forgiven for a heated word or indiscretion. In other words, welcome and value diversity.
“From today on, my cathedral will be the country,” Fernando Lugo declared when he resigned from the priesthood in December 2006. The Vatican, irritated by the public gesture, says Lugo remains a priest and is barred by canon law from seeking public office.
But this former bishop ran for the office of president of Paraguay. And won. His slogan: “Lugo has heart.” His personal warmth and religious background stirred hope in many Paraguayans seeking change.
The election last Sunday was only the 4th time that Paraguayans have gone to the polls to elect a president since the fall of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner in 1989. Stroessner ruled Paraguay, a country of seven million people, for almost 35 years, leaving a legacy of corruption and one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere.
The Colorado Party, which supported Stroessner and ran a woman candidate against Lugo, had been in power longer than any other political party in the world - almost 60 years.
The 56-year-old Lugo has never held elective office, but he comes from a middle-class family of political activists. Three of his brothers were tortured during the Stroessner dictatorship for being political activists.
Supporters say Lugo radiates a priest-like sense of honesty. He vows to fight corruption, impose long-delayed agrarian reform to benefit the landless and renegotiate hydroelectric deals with neighboring Brazil and Argentina to fund education and other neglected social needs.
Lugo refused to be characterized as a leftist or anything other than a deeply religious crusader who fights for the little guy. He takes inspiration from liberation theology, a movement championing the downtrodden but assailed by the Vatican for Marxist influences.
“I have taken a preferential option for the poor, and many interpret that as meaning I am a leftist,” Lugo said. “But I believe I am in the center. My beliefs are against confrontation and violence.”
Lugo did stints as a schoolteacher and missionary before becoming a rural bishop known for both his political activism and conciliatory skills. He says he opted to seek office after more than 100,000 people signed a petition urging him to run. On the campaign trail, he still sports his priestly sandals.
Lugo says he remains a devout Catholic who takes Communion each Sunday and finds succor in his faith. “The church has shown me how the poor live in this country. That inspires me to work on behalf of this class that is so demeaned, so abandoned, so forgotten.”
I’m happy for Paraguay, but I wish he was running for president in the U.S. He has the right stuff - priorities and humanity.
