admin August 11th, 2006
What a great point (about “womenpriests”)!
http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2006/08/about-those-delu ded-women.html
Seriously – let’s say you accept women’s ordination (which I, like Curt Jester, do not). Where is the period of discernment? Where is the seminary training? (Why are so many of them married?)
admin August 11th, 2006
When is someone going to drive the fundraisers out of the temple?
As if being mock-crucified on a glittery cross onstage with a crown of faux thorns weren’t bad enough – well, it is quite bad enough, thank you – Madonna has again provoked the Italian public. Only this time, I honestly don’t think she’s the primary culprit.
Don’t get me wrong; I have no love lost for Madonna. I can count on one hand the number of songs of hers that I like (I mean like, not just idly sing along with because I’ve heard them ad nauseam for so many years). I think she’s a bit pathetic, honestly, especially after I saw (and heard) her performance at Live 8. I can’t simultaneously sing and dance either, but I don’t try to do it in front of millions of people; and I intend to grow old much more gracefully than she has.
Now people are up in arms – particularly in the wake of the mock crucifixion, which for the record absolutely turned my stomach – about an ad. It’s in remarkably good taste (by Madonna’s standards especially), except that it’s on the side of a cathedral.
Come on, people. If your church needs money that badly, pony up! Don’t make them rent out their exterior walls to raise money, especially not to an attention-seeking, Kabbalah-phoney, wanna-be-Englishwoman!
(If you look carefully, underneath her picture you can see the sacrificial doves for sale…)
admin August 10th, 2006
Talk About a Thin Silver Lining…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aybHtWXb A99I&refer=home
All I can say is, thank God for Scotland Yard!
admin August 10th, 2006
Wow – Americans Sure Are Whiny and Self-Righteous! 
This blog from the Racine Report attempts to clarify the role of women in the Catholic Church. It comes at the issue from a very biased standpoint, and I don’t particularly care for the fact that the blogger chose to represent it as an objective “Q&A” information session rather than the opinion piece that it really is, but fine. What really got me were the comments. All those Kasias down there at the bottom are me. I’ll cut and paste those, since I wrote them, but since I am not sure of the legality of copy/pasting the entire article, I won’t do that:
kasia wrote:
“If it does not feel right in your heart it is not of spirit.”Whatever. That “internal witness” argument is how we got a bajillion fractured churches to begin with. The Spirit may speak to me or through me, but my heart is not reliable – it is very subject to my will.I echo what “Just Joe” said. If you don’t like or agree with it, no one’s forcing you to be a part of it. If you stay in the Church, I think it suggests that you think it may be right and are trying to straddle a fence.
08/10 09:32:21
Kasia wrote:
To “Enough Already” – how much have you researched the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church? I suggest “Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic” as a jumping-off place. You might also read some of the early Church Fathers: Irenaeus, Augustine, Cyril, Ignatius. However, since their writings are pretty substantial, you might try a distilled version like “Crossing the Tiber” by Steven K. Ray, which draws together extensive Scriptural and early Church references to explain why Catholics do what they do.
08/10 09:36:34
Kasia wrote:
To “Always Wondered Why” – I can’t speak to the particulars of the situation you described. I would certainly hope it has been addressed too. However, that one priest eating steak once a week does not suggest that the Church placed a higher value on him than on your aunt. I suspect his relative was treating, and his choice to accept that does not necessarily reflect the Church. We’re all flawed – I know I am. The Church, like any organization, is made up of imperfect people.
08/10 10:28:06
Kasia wrote:
To “Packer Fan Four Ever” – the role of women, according to the Church as I understand her teachings, is *not* to serve man, but to serve God. Women are understood to have a special role in the Church, and not (as someone aptly put it) because they can make peanut butter sandwiches – anyone can do that.I think the hostility toward the Church’s view of women comes primarily from two sources in the U.S.: from our ‘modern’ (as in anti-traditional) view of gender roles, and from a misunderstanding of the Church’s teaching.The former is a fundamental conflict; the latter is not. There is quite a bit of reading that one can do on this issue too, if you are inclined to hear other arguments. I suggest starting with Pope John Paul II.
08/10 10:34:36
admin August 10th, 2006
As If GM Didn’t Have Enough Problems…
I guess Chevy is too pedestrian to drive the Motor City these days. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been given a Cadillac Escalade on loan from GM for his 24/7 “official” use. Here is the article.
I have so many problems with this, I am not sure where to begin. How about we start with what is expressly mentioned in the article, that out of the mayors of 13 major cities (of which Detroit is ranked 11th, thank you very much), only one (San Antonio) has a comparable vehicle, and that mayor does not have 24/7 access to his vehicle. Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who could afford a whole fleet of Escalades, rides the subway. New York is (a) incontrovertibly a world-class city, (b) at least as dangerous as Detroit, thank you very much, and (c) Bloomberg is a much less physically imposing presence than Kilpatrick.
My next issue is that this has echoes of the infamous Navigator. For anyone who doesn’t know how badly Detroit’s officials pick the taxpayers’ pockets, Mayor Kilpatrick asked the police department to lease a vehicle (on City money) for his wife’s personal use. They leased a fully-loaded Lincoln Navigator (at an exorbitant price, if memory serves). Then the story broke; the public was outraged; and the vehicle sat in a police garage until the lease expired. (At least we can be pretty sure that they didn’t go over the mileage allowance…)
Now let’s consider this quote from the article: “This is a very tough job,” Kilpatrick said Wednesday, recounting how at times he has asked to be driven to crime scenes at 3 a.m.
Excuse me?
I recognize there’s not a lot of context there, and there may be a perfectly good explanation for that. But if, in fact, the mayor of Detroit needs to be present at a crime scene at 3 a.m. (mind you, he’s not a former cop or anything, so it’s not like his expertise is needed), it seems to me that he can drive himself there!
In fairness, it’s not so much that I object to the mayor having a driver. (However, I think Mayor Bloomberg’s approach is much more sensible, and I also think that if Mayor Kilpatrick were half the people’s mayor he pretends to be he would ride the bus once in a while. Maybe then he’d realize that people actually need to take buses at odd times – like 3 a.m. – and that he shouldn’t be cutting our already-pathetic bus service! But I digress…) My objections, I suppose, come down to the following:
- The mayor of the City of Detroit, however much I love this city, does not merit a luxury SUV and a 24/7 driver. It is not standard for mayors of comparable (or even larger) cities; the driving staff must be expensive; and even if the SUV is free, it sends a terrible message when the city is on the brink of receivership. Not only does it send the message that the mayor doesn’t care and that he thinks he’s better than the city he is supposed to serve (note: public SERVANT, not public BENEFICIARY), but it also sends the message to people that they “deserve” luxuries even if they can’t afford them.
You, I, Mayor Kilpatrick, and the citizens of Detroit and of the world all deserve habitable housing. We all deserve nutritious food to eat, however it is provided. We all deserve to live in relative safety, without the fear of being gunned down in our homes. These are basic human rights, as far as I’m concerned. However, we do not deserve Cadillacs (or even cars). We do not deserve McMansions. We do not deserve to eat out every day.
- GM, like Detroit, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. I recognize that one Escalade is a drop in the bucket for GM, and that they regard it as a promotional opportunity. However, putting aside the negative PR associated with this particular promotion (for the above-mentioned reasons and probably more), this doesn’t make me want to buy a GM product. It says nothing about their quality, which is my first concern in buying a car. It does nothing to enhance GM’s reputation for me. If anything, it makes me angry because GM is continuing to actively promote SUVs. I firmly believe (though I can’t prove this) that half of the people who drive big honking gas-guzzlers like that can’t even really afford to pay for their lease/loan, insurance and upkeep, much less keep them filled up with $3/gallon gas. >:O
- Detroit’s officials think altogether too much of themselves. Our former City Clerk, Jackie Currie, had 24-hour police protection. The cop was carrying her dry cleaning, for pete’s sake! How much danger can you be in if your bodyguard has his hands full of your dry cleaning?!
Being an elected official does not – I repeat, does not – make you more important than the hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are paying your salary. The President of the United States merits 24-hour protection; unless there is an active threat, a city clerk (no matter for what city) does not.
Grrr!
admin August 8th, 2006
Update on RCIA
Well, the church administrative assistant sent me the registration form for RCIA and told me to whom I should send it. I filled it out and sent it to the DRE, and just heard back from her. Looks like this is really happening.
It was a strange experience, really, to fill out a form like this. It asked, among other things, what religion my parents were. It’s a mark of how acculturated I am to the U.S. and its litigious mentality that my first response was “That’s none of their business – what does that have to do with anything?!” Then I stopped — and thought — oh yeah, they’re a CHURCH, and this form is so they can help me with my SPIRITUAL FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT. My parents’ religion is very germane to this issue!
Here is what I wrote in response to the request for a brief statement on what had brought me to this point:
It’s a very long story, but I’ll try to be brief. I was raised Unitarian-Universalist. In my teen years I started to seek God, after many years of agnosticism and atheism. I had a partial conversion at about 16, and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at 17. (I say ‘partial’ because in hindsight it was primarily an intellectual conversion; I have generally been driven by intellectual choice first and the heart follows, sometimes very slowly.)
I fell away somewhat in college and fell back into agnosticism. When I was 26 and in the throes of a severe depression, God made Himself and His existence very plain to me. I have been seeking Him ever since, first in a Bible study group I joined through a classmate. It was through that Bible study group and those friends that God worked to convince me that Christ is my Savior and Redeemer, in my heart as well as in my mind. However, I still had not found a spiritual home.
I began dating a Catholic several years ago. We are discussing the possibility of marriage, and the issue of church has come up several times. He has made it clear that, while he is open to compromising on a church to attend, he will always consider himself to be Catholic. I was not prepared to consider joining the Catholic Church until I realized how far the Episcopal and Anglican (and some Lutheran) churches have come along the path to secularization. Furthermore, as I have been researching, reading, and praying about the Church, I have begun to think that perhaps it is Christ’s true Church after all. I am not sure – not sure at all – and this is a very difficult and painful transition for me; but I have to follow God wherever He leads me.
admin August 8th, 2006
Unclear on the concept: self-entitled baby boomer tells Catholic Church “You can’t excommunicate me – I have to excommunicate myself!”
This was priceless. Way too juicy to miss blogging on.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tells us that Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg, one of the “womanpriests” who was “ordained” a priest on a boat near Pittsburgh is “startled” that her archbishop distributed a letter to her fellow parishioners, informing them that he is obligated to tell the Vatican what Ms. Vandenberg did.
Before you say “Well, what she did was between her, the hierarchy, and God,” let me just say “No, actually, it isn’t.” I mean, it is, in that those are the primary parties concerned. However, if the archbishop had not distributed the information, it would have been held up as yet one more example of the Catholic Church’s secrecy, and you can bet your buttons that Ms. Vandenberg would have won the PR war (not, of course, that that’s the most important war involved here).
Here are the points from the article that really stuck out for me:
- “Vandenberg, 64, said Monday that she was ’startled’ by the letter and surprised that Dolan had ’spent so much time and energy’ on it when ‘other important things’ might demand his attention.”
Excuse me? You’ve been explicitly told that taking this action could lead to your being excommunicated. Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church doesn’t excommunicate willy-nilly, at least not now. (There have been some interesting articles about abuses of excommunication, but that doesn’t apply here.) Shouldn’t that clue you in that what you’re doing might well be a very important thing in the eyes of the Church?!
- “She was stung that Dolan made details of their talk public. “We both agreed that the meeting would be private,” she said.”
And I expect that he would have been happy to do so, but going back to the PR of the issue, those details were presumably relevant to the substance of the letter he wrote (i.e. him telling you that you could be excommunicated for doing this). If he had left them out, he would have been leaving the Church open to the public assumption that you were ignorant of the consequences of your actions. My PR professor always told us that perception may not be reality, but that it is in PR. You don’t get to frame the issue with only the details that are convenient to your side of the argument.
- “‘She promised she would confer with me about her next step,’ Dolan wrote to the parish. ‘In two subsequent letters, I have asked for her decision. Her regrettable participation in the protest gives me her unfortunate answer.’
Vandenberg said that ‘wasn’t quite accurate.’
‘I did respond to him in a letter,’ she said. “And I said . . . I (was) still deciding what I should do.’
So in other words, he wrote you…let’s give you the benefit of the doubt here and say you wrote back after the first letter (though it may have been after the second letter). You wrote back and said “I’m still deciding” (again, I am trying to give the benefit of the doubt). Then he sends the second letter – or you responded after the second letter with “I’m still deciding” – and, when you DO make the decision, you don’t tell him. That’s just rude and disrespectful, no matter with whom you’re dealing.
If I decide not to take a job, I respond to the prospective employer and decline it. I did choose not to respond to one of the mortgage companies I decided not to go with when I bought my condo, because their agent was so rude to me the last time I spoke with her, but I acknowledge that that was rude and childish of me, and when another agent contacted me to follow up I told her what had happened and that I had decided to go with another company. It’s pretty simple – it’s what grown-ups do.
- “Of official efforts to sever her ties to the church. Vandenberg said: ‘Excommunication is simply a punishment. That doesn’t mean I’m excluded from the church. Only I can exclude myself.’”
Well, yes and no. As I understand it, excommunication is a punishment. And according to the preliminary research I’ve done, for many excommunication cases, enforcement does lie with the excommunicant. However, this looks to me (again, preliminarily) to be more of a case of an interdict, in which she would be barred from receiving sacraments. So yes, Virginia, they can exclude you.
There’s a very good op-ed in the Journal Sentinel by a Milwaukee seminarian, explaining the Catholic Church’s position, here.
admin August 8th, 2006
No Wonder They Made Her a Bishop…
…apparently Nevadans don’t even know basic history!
Cast your mind back to high school World History. (I read about this younger, but I was a nerd who had no life. At the very least you should have learned this in high school.) Remember King Henry VIII of England? You know, “King Henry VIII, to six wives he was wedded: one died; one survived; two divorced; two beheaded.”
Yeah. That one. The same guy who created the Church of England because Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Right. It’s all coming back, right?
OK. Now that we’re more or less on the same page, tell me what you think of this quote:
“The irony is, Catholicism was part of the Episcopal Church before a split in the 1500s.”
HUH?!?!?!
Now here is the e-mail I sent to Rhonda Costa-Landers, who is the Religion & Community editor of the Nevada Appeal (the publication that printed that choice piece of pseudo-history):
Dear Ms. Costa-Landers:
I have just read your publication’s article by Susan Wood, “Episcopal bishop thrives in male-dominated world.” I must register my dismay at a glaring error that escaped your editorial staff’s attention.
The article states that: “The irony is, Catholicism was part of the Episcopal Church before a split in the 1500s.” As I expect you know, that is backwards. The Church of England came into existence under King Henry VIII because the Pope (Clement VII) refused to annul Henry’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In response, Henry decreed that England was no longer under papal authority and formed his own church (the Church of England or Anglican Church). The Episcopal Church is the American institution.
This is basic history. The Episcopal Church did not even exist in the 1500s, and the Anglican Church (from which the Episcopal Church developed) was a part of the Catholic Church until the 1530s, not vice versa! To say otherwise with full knowledge of the historical record is sheer revisionism and is intellectually dishonest. I can only believe that your writer was simply ignorant of the particulars, or else miswrote, rather than that she willfully misrepresented the historical record. I trust that your publication will run a correction, and look forward to reading it.
Sincerely,
Katie Orloff
Detroit, MI
We’ll see what, if anything, Ms. Costa-Landers writes back to me, and I promise to publish it on my blog if it merits mention.
The rest of the article is not much better, but at least it’s not incontrovertibly factually WRONG! I realize that not everyone’s a big nerd like I am, and even I had to look up which Pope it was. But come ON! This is really, really basic stuff!
admin August 7th, 2006
“We are just Episcopalians.”
The Episcopal Voices of Central Florida just held a meeting in which, true to Episcopal form, they refused to take any sort of stand whatsoever.
OK, that wasn’t really fair. Their agenda was to prevent their diocese from splitting from the Episcopal Church; apparently the Diocese of Central Florida asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a primate outside the U.S. Episcopal Church.
Did you get all that? Well, I for one could use some clarification, so I’ll lay this all out and see if it makes sense…
The Anglican Communion is the broad umbrella group. Its leader is the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently the Rev. Rowan Williams (I almost typed “Atkinson” – been watching too much Blackadder), though strictly speaking he doesn’t head it up the way the Pope heads up the Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury is much more of a primus inter pares, like in the Orthodox Church or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. and Canadian branches of the Anglicans – primarily the Episcopal Church in the U.S. – have been unapologetically ticking off the global Anglican Communion for several years now: ordaining openly gay priests, consecrating openly gay bishops, etc. Quite a few more conservative Episcopals have expressed their desire to stay in line with the rest of the global Anglican Communion on this and other issues. The Episcopal Church, however, has declined to moderate its stance. As such, they are virtually ensuring a split between themselves and the global Anglican Communion.
SO, apparently the governing board of the largely-conservative Diocese of Central Florida voted unanimously – read that again, UNANIMOUSLY – to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to put them under the authority of a non-U.S.-Episcopalian. In other words, they said “We don’t want to split; please split us from the splitters.”
Now about 150 Episcopalians from that diocese met and said, basically, “Can’t we all just get along?”
In fairness, I do think that they have the right idea, at least insofar as they acknowledge that schism is not a good option. I’m not sure who’s really at fault in terms of the schism, the Episcopals writ large or this diocese, but this sub-group is saying “let’s stick together”, so kudos.
But holy missing the mountain for the molehill, Batman! They’re refusing to take any sort of stand on anything except sticking together – let’s copy/paste this so we get it exactly right:
“We take no position on Scripture or theology or morals,” said Donna Bott, a leader of a group called Episcopal Voices of Central Florida, which sponsored the meeting. “We are just Episcopalians.”
I do appreciate that their agenda is unity. That’s great. But unity at what cost?
I’m thinking that this is a case of where the forest has gotten lost in the trees. They’re a little like the Pharisees: so intent on preserving the institution at all costs that they have lost sight of the institution’s purpose. If they are refusing to take a stand on Scripture, theology, or morals, on what grounds do they base their desire to stay unified?
admin August 7th, 2006
Baby-Stepping Towards God
As some of you – ok, all three of you who read this blog – know, I’ve been struggling with my denominational identification for a few years now. I’ve been a committed Christian for some time, but without any really meaningful church identification (it’s a long story, and worthy of a few posts sometime, but not right now).
Anyway, long story short – I just e-mailed St. Anastasia Roman Catholic Church about signing up for RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, which is how you join the Catholic Church if you’re neither a cradle Catholic nor a budding saint like St. Edith Stein). One more baby step in this long walk with Jesus…and thank goodness He has been so patient with me!
