Circular letter likely to be self-enforcing

The very top of the letter should say it all: CIRCULAR LETTER TO ASSIST EPISCOPAL CONFERENCES IN DEVELOPING GUIDELINES FOR DEALING WITH CASES OF SEXUAL ABUSES OF MINORS PERPETRATED BY CLERICS.

This isn’t a motu proprio. This isn’t an instruction, like Universae Ecclesiae was. Like Fr. Federico Lombardi said, “The aim of the letter is to have a common denominator of principles.” Not only is this what we’re given, this is pretty much what we were told to expect.

Which, of course, made it all that much easier for David Clohessy of SNAP to go on another one of his tirades:

“Bishops ignore and conceal child sex crimes because they can …. So any ‘reform’ that doesn’t diminish bishops’ power and discretion is virtually meaningless.” [We’ll be coming back to this ….]

And the new Vatican statement will not require bishops to report suspected abusers to the police, he anticipated.

“They aren’t binding or mandatory, just suggestions,” [Clohessy] said. “Such voluntary ‘guidelines’ have been widely ignored for years in the past. Top church staff have known of clergy sex crimes and cover ups for decades, if not centuries.”

The CNN.com “Belief Blog” authors, Richard Allen Greene and Hada Messia, note almost sardonically, “Clohessy spoke to CNN before seeing the Vatican’s statement.”

Will iPhones replace churches?

Lisa Miller, the former religion editor of Newsweek, sees in smartphone apps the death of the church as we know it. And from all appearances, she’s happy about it.

“With Scripture on iPhones and iPads, believers can bypass constraining religious structures — otherwise known as ‘church’ — in favor of a more individual connection with God,” Miller gloats in “My take: How technology could bring down the church” on CNN.com’s “Belief Blog”. “This helps solve a problem that Christian leaders are increasingly articulating: that even among people who say that Jesus Christ is their personal Lord and savior, folks don’t read the Bible.”

Young Christians “have come to expect experiences that appear unscripted and interactive,” the Christian demographer Dave Kinnaman told the Christian magazine Charisma in 2009, “that allow them to be open and honest with their questions, that are technologically stimulating, that are done alongside peers and within trusted relationships.”

This yearning for a more unmediated faith — including Bible verses live in your pocket or purse 24/7, available to inspire or console wherever and whenever they’re needed — has met an enthusiastic embrace.

“It is not too much to say that the King James Bible … democratized religion by taking it out of the hands of the clerical few and giving it to the many,” Miller claims a little earlier. “Just like the 500-year-old Protestant Reformation …, changes wrought by new technology have the potential to bring down the church as we know it.”

Oh yes, those big, bad clerics. Christianity versus “Churchianity”.

If everyone in the world were Catholic ...

Simcha Fisher has posted an excellent takedown of people who react badly to her having eight children, especially since Number Nine is on the way. Her point, boiled down, is: “They’re my kids, not my political manifesto! Get over yourselves!”

Amen, sister! Testify!

While most of her followers (I’m one of maybe three men; the rest are all mothers, mostly of four or more children) extended their congratulations, commiserations and occasional “Hey, I’m pregnant too”, one — Mary, a woman trying to work her way out of atheism — had this thought:

I think the issue is not: whether your adding more people to rural NH is going to overwhelm the world, but rather that [the Catholic Church] puts forth doctrine that basically always calls more children (rather than less) as a blessing, deems a mortal sin as using any method of contraception (including coitus interruptus as they talked about in the article you referenced) or having a contraceptive mentality even within a committed marriage.

Personal choices have global repercussions when they are adopted globally. … Behavior only has consequences when it is amplified by many adopters. You know this. If everyone suddenly converted to Catholicism and practiced it according to doctrine, there would be a birth explosion, and you know that.

A heartless defense of children's dignity

In a society seemingly dedicated to killing children, it’s refreshing and delightful to find couples who have an always-room-for-one-more attitude. And it’s also heartbreaking when such a loving couple has difficulties in conceiving and carrying children to term.

For that reason, it’s hard not to feel like a heartless bastard when you have to explain the Catholic Church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization. It’s like telling your son or your daughter that they can’t have that dog in the window: no matter how well you explain it, you’re afraid all your child is going to get out of the explanation is that you’re a big meanie and that you don’t love him.

In 2009, Sean and Carolyn Savage were caught in a media storm when she received another couple’s embryo by mistake. After birth, the child was immediately handed off to his genetic parents. That very day, the Diocese of Toledo released a statement condemning IVF.

Now Sean Savage, a “cradle Catholic”, has written a post for CNN’s Belief Blog, arguing that the Church should change its teaching on IVF. As much as I sympathize with the Savages’ situation, I find it odd that they didn’t learn from the experience. You’d think giving birth to someone else’s baby might have caused some deeper reflection.

Playing the bully card

Almost any day of the week, you can hop onto the CNN, MSNBC or FOX News websites and read a story written with a naked political bias. Everyone knows this, though many people still praise such stories as “refreshingly honest” or “thoughtful” when in fact they’re hit pieces with no sense of objectivity.

Such was the case yesterday: Helen A. S. Popkin wrote a post attacking Alan Chambers of Exodus International, a Christian ministry that helps people who suffer from same-sex attraction. (She repeats a snark from Caitlin Dickson: “Remember Exodus International? The ministry that recently released and then lost an iPhone app that taught how to convert gay people to heterosexuality?”)

Chambers, in an interview with the Christian Post, took issue with the Google ad for the “It Gets Better” project, focused on “LGBT kids” targeted for bullying. “Children all over the world, including my two children are fans of ‘Toy Story’ and to see a character like that endorsing something that at this point children have no need to know about, it’s disappointing.”

The title of Popkin’s post? “Toy Story’s Woody bullied by anti-gay leader”.

To a very special Mother

Fundamentalists and Evangelicals sing in truth, "What a friend we have in Jesus!" But I wonder what their Friend thinks about the way they talk about His Mother.

You may read the Bible. You may read it so much that you can rattle off whole chapters from memory without missing a word. But if you don't have a proper love and reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mother, then either you don't truly understand what you read, or your relationship with Jesus is way off. Or both.

Yes, Marian devotion can be overdone, just as you can have an inordinate or improper love for your own mother. But the opposite is just as true. "As a protestant," Randy at Speak the Truth in Love writes, "I looked at Mary and saw a concubine. Someone who performed a biological function. A surrogate mother. I was told to look at her and marvel at how amazing a thing she did. God using her body to bring Jesus to the world. That contemplating that was dangerous. It might lead me to worship Mary."

Yes, Randy has come past that point. And to be fair, there are Protestants who love Mary as well. "You Catholics don't have sole claim on her," one woman said, and I for one am willing to share. But to regard Mary as important only for her uterus? That wrongs not just Mary — and all women should take umbrage at it — but God as well.

Counting paper chickens

One recurring problem with mathematics is that mathematical models of reality tend to be mistaken for reality itself. I’m becoming more convinced that this is happening with economics.

Let’s look at money: pieces of paper (formerly pieces of precious metals) of arbitrary value traded in exchange for goods and services, also of a more or less arbitrary value, because it’s simpler than trading chickens and cows. In theory, it’s a refinement of barter, where one traded goods and services in exchange for other goods and services. Currency is in essence an IOU: “I don’t have a chicken, so I’ll give you this instead.”

The point to remember, though, is that the value of the exchange medium — gold coins, pieces of paper, wampum belts, whatever — isn’t in itself but in what amount of goods and services one can obtain with it. Objectively, the true wealth isn’t in the possession of cash but in the goods and services one can access.

But considering the bewildering variety of goods and services available on the market, wealth is nigh unto impossible to express unless reduced to some common denominator. So economists track the dollar values rather than the goods and services … and money becomes completely abstracted from what it represents.

Apologetics toolbox: Apostolic succession

When discussing apostolic succession with an Evangelical/fundamentalist who’s using the New International Version of the Bible, you’ll have to explain first where the word “bishop” comes from.

“Bishop”, as I’ve explained over on the other blog, comes from the vulgar Latin word biscopus (LL. episcopus), which in turn comes from the Greek word episkopos. In NIV, episkopos is directly translated as “overseer”; while that is what the word means, it can lead a person who doesn’t know New Testament Greek to miss the connection. If you have a standard English dictionary that shows word origins, or if you have Strong’s Greek Lexicon, you can show it to them from there.

(As an added bonus — if you wish to be an insufferable know-it-all — you can also point out that “priest” comes from presbyteros, which is translated in most English bibles as either “leader” or “elder”.)

Now, remember that discussions about bishops and apostolic succession are truly fights over authority: authority to interpret the Gospel, authority to discern authentic doctrine, authority to bind the conscience of the faithful to the teachings of the Church. That’s why even a person willing to concede that sola scriptura is flawed doctrine will hold that apostolic authority ended with the passing of St. John the Evangelist (ca. 90).

Winds of change blowing in Queensland—UPDATED

This press release has appeared on the Vatican website (here translated from the Italian via Google Translate, with refinement by yours truly):

APPOINTMENTS AND CANCELLATIONS, 02.05.2011

RELIEVING THE BISHOP of Toowoomba (AUSTRALIA)

The Holy Father Benedict XVI has relieved from the pastoral care of the Diocese of Toowoomba (Australia) HE Bishop William M. Morris.

In response, Bp. Morris, 67, retired from his episcopate (a bishop doesn't stop being a bishop when he's relieved of his see). [UPDATE: See Dr. Edward Peters' comments on the legal and ecclesiological implications of "privation" versus "removal". The post was written after Bp. Jean-Claude Makaya Loemba was forced out of the diocese of Pointe-Noire (Congo), but it may apply here.]

According to The Australian, "In his letter, Bishop Morris said the Vatican's decision was sparked by complaints to Rome about an Advent letter he wrote in 2006. In that letter, he argued that with an ageing clergy the church should be open to all eventualities, including ordaining women, ordaining married men, welcoming back former priests and recognising the validity of Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church orders."

That, however, wasn't the only cause. There were also concerns about general absolution, the material contained in diocesan school sex-education programs, and the diocese's appalling vocations record (virtually zero over the last few years). Nor was the relief precipitate: According to the bishop's own letter, the Vatican had been talking with him over the last five years, and Abp. Charles J. Chaput of Denver led an apostolic visitation to Toowoomba to investigate.

How much is "enough"?—UPDATED

If I am made to walk the plank by a pirate, it is vain for me to offer, as a common-sense compromise, to walk along the plank for a reasonable distance. It is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate and I differ. There is an exquisite mathematical split second at which the plank tips up. My common-sense ends just before that instant; the pirate’s common-sense begins just beyond it. But the point itself is as hard as any geometrical diagram; as abstract as any theological dogma.

—G. K. Chesterton, “Wanted, An Unpractical Man”,

What’s Wrong with the World

I don’t wish to waste time dissecting Maureen Dowd’s gasbag collection of gripes over John Paul II’s beatification. Frankly, most of it is the usual garbage: JP2 didn’t follow the mainstream Protestant communions’ bad examples. The one charge that merits looking into is this: “… John Paul forfeited his right to beatification when he failed to establish a legal standard to remove pedophiles from the priesthood, and simply turned away for many years.”

Beatification isn’t a “right”, but that’s not my point. Factually, Dowd’s charge is incorrect as well: a legal process was already established, although it was horrifically slow. And he did make changes to increase the speed in 2001, before the scandals broke open in 2002.