Back to the Nightmares at 66 Brooks Drive

I know we had a little fun with politics in the past couple of weeks but the Boston Blogging Community is all plugging away at the nightmares at the Boston Chancery.

There's a short list of the most compelling problems at Boston Catholic Insider.

The top two on my short list are the structural changes made to the Roman Catholic Church that severs Rome from the teaching authority of Boston Catholics and one of the first policies to emerge from the counterfeit operation the 'non-discrimination policy'.  

You will be seeing more of this in the upcoming week (and weeks) that should be pretty shattering to the trust of Boston Catholics.   The 'presbyteral council' which is largely (though not completely) a group of weak priests who are chosen specifically because they are weak and will rubber stamp any policy no matter how scandalous and offensive it is to Christ, His Church or the souls they were ordained to lead to salvation.

The priests who rubber stamp this policy will be the first among the parishes targeted on the campaigns to defund in 2011.     Everything is about the money.  When they start to fail to be able to make their expenses, the Archdiocese pulls them from their posts.        There will be more forthcoming regarding the priests and archdiocescan council who thus far is rubber stamping the dismantling of Catholic identity of our diocese and our schools and communication to the Nuncio and Holy See.

In the meantime, please continue to visit BHE and send out the fed up communications.

One other thing that is critical this week is the Bishops election duly noted in BCI.

 - USCCB President Election: upcoming vote November 15-18 in Baltiimore for the new president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Will Cardinal O’Malley, and Bishops Hennessey, Kennedy, Uglietto, Dooher, Edyvean, and Allué vote to elect as national leader a bishop known to have enabled a priest convicted of child sexual abuse who is now defrocked and jailed?

This Bishop's judgment is as bad as it gets and the US Bishops have no business electing him as President.   They're back to their old tricks because the RICO investigation and victims' advocates have been neutralized.

There will be more on this in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!

Further Adrift: Cast Your Nets Into the Deep Water - These are the Days!

Several readers and friends have sent me a story published in Commonweal called "Further Adrift" looking for some feedback.

I'm about as likely to read Commonweal as a treatise on human sexuality written Michael Sean Winters and Joan Chittister would pique my interest and so I thank you for calling this article to my attention.

The article cites that one out of every three baptized Catholics have left the Catholic Church, and cites heterodox priest Thomas Reese characterizing the situation as a disaster.

The irony of this kills me.  This Jesuit who has been misleading the faithful for decades is looking out into the empty seats in the pews and he is oh-so concerned about what happened?

An article written by Deal Hudson featured this week on Inside Catholic put what Reese and his generation of Catholic wreckovators did to the consciousness of this generation into perspective.   It's a book review of a book called "Conversations with God".

All you need to know about the book can be gleaned from its acknowledgments, where he thanks John Denver, "whose songs touch my soul"; Richard Bach, author of that influential epic, Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Barbra Streisand, whose singing causes him "to feel what is true"; and Robert Heinlein, "whose visionary literature has raised questions and posed answers in ways no one else has dared even approach."  [Yes, I swooned over this kind of drivel! - cm]

My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it. . . . hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth. [Can anyone say 'divination'?]

If you feel like having sex with your secretary, have it. If you feel like taking birth control, take them.    If two same sex people feel like getting married, let's legalize it. [But then why are polygamists discriminated against?] If teenagers feel like smoking pot, let's decriminalize it.  If teens feel like drinking, let's provide a safe place.  They will feel like having sex, so let's teach them how to do it safely and hand them a condom. [I've never understood why these adults don't provide a safe bedroom with nice clean sheets].  If a woman is attracted to an irresponsible man and gets pregnant, she may feel like killing their unborn child, so let's make it safe for her.  [Why not teach women how the attributes of a responsible man manifest themselves and how to please God by saving herself for him?  The dumbing down of women.]    If Muslims feel like hijacking a plane and driving it into a building full of Americans, do it.  If Muslims feel like putting a victory shrine over the graves of our people, we must let them.   If you're a priest and you feel like having sex with a child, have it.  If you're a Bishop catching pedophiles and you feel like shuffling them to another parish, onward Christian soldier.

Ooops....wait a minute.  

I guess feelings aren't the indicators to right vs. wrong after all.

But, if Christ's Church is not the arbiter of good and evil and the Holy Spirit, who shall be like God?

Why it's Peter Steinfels, of course!

Catholics becoming unaffiliated stressed disagreement with church teachings, both general teachings and church positions on specific issues like abortion, homosexuality, and treatment of women, and to a lesser extent clerical celibacy. In open-ended questioning, they also stressed hypocrisy and other moral and spiritual failures of church leaders and fellow Catholics.

....as well as theologically more complex and controversial matters like expanding the pool of those eligible for ordination and revisiting some aspects of the church’s teaching on sexuality.

People stopped coming to Church because they don't want to hear sex outside of the Sacrament of marriage, birth control, abortion, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery and jealousy are sins.  It makes people feel bad about themselves.

If the Catholic Church would only silence people teaching these things, there will be a stampede back into the pews to received the Body, Blood Soul and Divinity of Our Lord.

 Priests and lay people imparting knowledge of right from wrong, good from bad, truth from lies are scaring people away from the pews.You are supposed to rope them in.  Meet them where they're at, tell them how good they are no matter what kinds of choices they are making.

Get it?

The fix is in.  The trick is to keep people out of a state of grace. The fruit of sin is a magnet to the Sacraments, holiness and God.

Will they ever get over those three days in Woodstock?

I don't mean to be condescending... but how does this stolid philosophy keep on going?

Could be my stubborn unwillingness to be taken for a fool but I don't understand how anyone could swallow this balderdash.

Was a whole generation deprived of analytical skills?

The impact of sin on a human soul is a natural repellent to Church and God.  There's something about sanctity that makes makes you want to keep your distance when you are on a track of impurity.

For example, a lot of people 'feel' like using the 'f' word in conversation. When people feel like saying the 'f' word, they're going to pass the Church and go to the corner barroom.  So too, when we are doing what is immoral we do not put ourselves in the company of  the Holy Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  Unless, of course we are ready to repent and amend our lives.   There are some who will of course are sit in the pews that are not there for purification and adoring God.   They are there to feel good about themselves.  That is what priests have turned our parishes into - places to gather in people to feel good about themselves. At the cost of salvation of their souls.   For the most part, people couldn't be bothered.  Like the author of this article, their interest in achievements are about Ivy League schools and their booty in the bank.  This of course makes the Cardinals, Bishops and priests salivate.   It is a feeding frenzy.


How does Seinfels reconcile why the pews were loaded when priests were teaching us sins and we were purifying our souls with the Sacrament of Penance and worthy reception of the Eucharist with his thesis?

The reality is, when Vatican II was used to desensitize people to sin so more people would come to Church, it backfired.

We can trick ourselves into believing all kinds of things that are not real.

I don't have the vantage point of spending decades fermenting in my opposition to the teachings of the Church, so maybe it's me, but I was struck by the absence of lucidity in Seinfels' attempt to pin the empty seats in Church to Pope John Paul II.

He claims that while we were busy following the Vicar of Christ, we didn't notice the millions who were not there.  

But this couldn't be any further than the truth.

When I was being interviewed for this AP article, the journalist noted that the priests who are now in formation are the children of the JPII generation and their faith is solid.  Pope Benedict XVI is convening a consistory to name 24 new Cardinals who will be casting the vote for the next Pope, setting the stage for his successor.  The Bernadin prelates in the US Episcopal Conference are retiring and dying and their replacements were taught by Pope John Paul II.

She asked why orthodox Catholics were rising at this time.

I explained to her that somewhere in between the death of John Paul II and  rising of the secular messiah obama, there was a new attempt on the ground to recalibrate the teachings of the Church to the next generation.  Which happen to be our own children.   Seeing a weak Cardinal, they have set up shop and they are planning to use what they are doing here as a blueprint for the rest of the country.  

Would you let their own children and grandchildren be led into an abyss right in front of you because the Bishops are sanctifying themselves?   Goodie for them.  We are interested in our children.

Zoll also asked how  I felt politics and theology intersect.  The animus that runs the country shapes academia, law and governance.  Everyone wants to influence thought because it creates the kind of world we will pass on to our children.  Catholics have the right and duty to put their two cents in.

The  'fed up' spirit of the 'tea party' movement made its way into theology.

So, while Seinfels sees this:

For some Catholics, this grieving has clearly passed beyond anger. It seems to border now on resignation to either a death of faith or withdrawal from the church.  For others, it means the impossibility of being in any way a “public Catholic,” whether in their fields of work, their communities, their parishes, or their circles of family and friends.

That's not at all what I see, so I guess it all depends on your vantage point.

There is a moment in Christ's ministry when the apostles had been trying to catch fish and every day came ashore with their nets empty.     He gets into Simon (Peter's) boat, they go out a bit into the water and He teaches the people on the shore from the boat.  He tells Simon to lower the nets.  Simon tells Christ that they have been fishing all night and day and couldn't catch anything but lowered the net as Christ wished.  You know how the story ends.

We are casting our nets into the deep.

As they settle into resignation, withdrawal and impossibility of being a public Catholic - there is a counterinsurgency.   We are invigorated.  These are the days.

So, I guess it's all working out.

These are the days you'll remember.

Never before and never since, I promise, 
will the whole world be warm as this.

And as you feel it, 

you'll know it's true
 that you 
are blessed and lucky.

It's true that you are touched by something 

that will grow and bloom in you.

These are the days you'll remember.

When May is rushing over you with desire 

to be part of the miracles you see in every hour.

You'll know it's true 

that you are blessed and lucky.

It's true 

that you

 are touched by something 

that will grow and bloom in you.

These.
Are.
The days!!

These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break.

These days 

you might feel a shaft of light 

make its way across your face.

And when you do 

you'll know how it was meant to be.

See the signs and know their meaning.

It's true,
you'll know how it was meant to be.
See the signs and know they're speaking
to you.


To YOU.


***

The Wild West of Blogosphere Can (and Will) Revitalize the Church

As more and more people have flocked to the internet to discuss topics dear to their hearts, a lively, loud and argumentative Catholic blogosphere, which has challenged bishops, magnified Church controversies, helped attract new faithful and put off others in turn, has flourished.

It is true that the tone in the blogosphere is often angry – and sometimes not without cause. People have turned to blogs because they have not been heard, because their concerns are not being listened to or even taken seriously. If their criticism of local bishops is uncharitable, it is possibly because is a real rupture in the communion of the Church that needs to be addressed. I know of more than one case where Church authorities have attempted to shut down blogs that are critical, using arguably the same sort of aggressive tactics they accuse the bloggers of using.

Precisely.

The rupture needs to be addressed because a generation of Catholics has been robbed of their faith and we are going to put an end to it, the easy way or the hard way.

The easy way would be to set up a structure at the Chancery level where errors and omissions are disciplined and acted upon.  When they are not acted upon, the Nuncio, which is the next level of the structure, acts upon it.  If the Nuncio doesn't act upon it, the Holy See takes action.

Nobody rational expects the Nuncio or the Holy See to act on every letter and email.

But, when several thousand faxes cross your desk about a situation (in Boston) where the Cardinal has abandoned his See and the priest running the place has a 40-year history of working with the socialists and Marxists in the Democratic party and groups like Call to Action and Sr. Carol Keenan's crowd, and he is packing the place with his cronies to undermine the teachings of the Church -- our expectation is, there will be a structure to address it.

We brought the revitalization of the Church to blogosphere because the conflicts in our parishes and schools didn't get us anywhere but  being slandered, maligned and driven out of our own parishes and schools.

The Bishops, who are responsible for the governance of the Church, have ignored these complaints until things deteriorated to the point where the conflicts in our parishes and schools don't get us anywhere but being slandered, maligned and driven out of our own parishes and schools.   Things have escalated to the point where people who want the truth taught in schools and parishes are told they better not go out their back door without feeling terrified because of what is going to be done to them.

We have made it clear to the Bishops, the Nuncio and the Holy See, in writing, (for at least the last five years in Boston) that is not an acceptable.     We do not and will not accept this situation.

Sadly, in the absence of their not taking us seriously, we must move on to the hard way.  

1. A public crusade to expose what is going on at every parish, at every school and in every Chancery.
2. Leadership that takes the people from inertia to revitalization.
2. Escalating the communications to the Nuncio and Holy See.
4. Shutting off the flow of money to the Bishop (at the high-donor level and the widow's mite).

The governance structure of the Archdiocese of Boston no longer has a Bishop at Its head.  The power has been handed over to a group of wealthy lay people and there is chaos and pandemonium.

J. Bryan Hehir opened up the door to the Boston College National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and they are in complete control of Cardinal O'Malley's See.

Catholics, especially Catholics who have undergone a conversion and acquiesce to the Church's teachings, have the tendency not to want to air the dirty laundry.   This era has come to an end and we are overturning the tables in the Temple.

It's the Wild Wild West.   We've been getting out of Dodge.

But if you look yonder up the road, you'll see we are getting out from behind our computers.  

We're baaaaaaaaaaaack.


***UPDATE -- ACTION ITEM ALERT

Boston Catholic Insider also has a Wild Wild West blogosphere post up today with the action item of writing to the Vicar General to not only express your concerns about the governance of the Archdiocese, but to ask him what the plan is to address those concerns.

The email is already drafted for you -- all you have to do is copy and paste it into and email, sign your name and hit send.     It doesn't get any easier than that.  

Visit Boston Catholic Insider now and send the Vicar General an email.

Boston Catholic Blogger Community Welcomes Pilot Readers

This week's Pilot features a story about the situation cooking in the Archdiocese of Boston.   

Boston Catholic Insider has put together a terrific summary to get new readers up to speed.  

The article is HERE.

Do you think it would be in poor taste to ask to have links to our blogs inserted into the story? 

A few things I'd like to mention.  

I must say that the article is a fair one but we do take umbridge with the name:

 "Archdiocese defends critical blog, seeks open dialogue"

It is important to note that while the diocese is trying to make this about their right as an employer to block a website, and they are people who seek open dialogue, this is PR spin.

The Boston Catholic Blogger Community is whistleblowing about concerns they have already tried to resolve internally and been ignored or retaliated against in one way or another.  Eight years of trying to report  concerns about conflicts of interest and the money, cronyism, and more importantly injustices to people and our faith have been met with obfuscation, harassment, threats and slander.

It is the response to having no systems in place to report injustices and corruption that will be taken seriously and acted upon.        This should resonate with anybody who has been watching and have concerns about the internal flaws of the people in positions of power and responsibility inside of the Catholic Church.

The whistleblowing community is a place where the Archdiocese no longer has the darkness to keep their dirt under wraps by threatening or taking punitive action against the people reporting it.  

Substantiated, verifiable situations are now seeing the light of day.  We are protecting the victims and  threats of chasing us down to destroy or punish us -- the tricks and treachery will also be very public so all will see and know what happens when you are a lover of justice.

What did the Archdiocese do when they saw their ability to sweep things under the carpet threatened in ways they would have no ability to control?

They tried to stifle our voices with threats of spending huge amounts of money to hire washed up and retired detectives to find out the identities of the people leaking their dirt, they limited people from access to the information and spin up the PR machine that try though they may to enter into Christ-centered talks with us, we have rebuffed them.  

Talk is cheap.

We have talked to them for eight years.  Nobody is listening and the situation is now out of control.

We have exhausted every internal forum.  The heirarchy is probably so bogged down, and there are only 24 hours in a day, the system is simply too gummed up to sit back and wait to be rescued.

It us up to us.  

We want civil and canonical rights of our priests restored.   We want them to have access to health care when they are sick and a pension to live on.

We want people who are being treated unfairly or harmed by employees and agents of the Archdiocese to have a process that hears those complaints and resolves the situation to the satisfaction of the victim.

We want the Catechism taught to our children and we want people who are teaching our children to object to those Truths to be removed from their ministries or teaching and administrative positions.  We want a system in place to report these concerns and resolves them to the satisfaction of those who want faithfulness taught to this generation and the next.

We want an end to cronyism, nepostism, conflicts of interest.

We want to keep our Catholic hospitals so that we can serve the poor and sick without leading them into temptation or violating our own consciences.   Since Caritas is now turning a profit, and we can't seem put our hands on how the diocese is being compensated for all of the Caritas assets in the big sell off, since the deal is riddled with conflicts of interest, since our religious symbols are being ripped off the walls before the Attorney General publishes her findings on the sale, we want the sale to Cerebus to be halted unless or until the deal is structured to protect the rights of Catholics, the sick and the poor.

The truth to the people running the Archdiocese will always be 'unfounded' because they block all efforts to find it.   They block other people from finding it.    They use their money and their power to silence people who know it and ask them to be accountable for resolving it.

THIS is the story.

In the aftermath of the 'sexual abuse' fracas, the Archdiocese is re-building the foundation of our Church on sand.  Truth is still the cornerstone that the builders are rejecting.

The Boston Catholic Blogger Community wants a stronger Church.  We want training to be evangelists.  We want ourselves, our children, family and friends to have the ability recognize sinfulness so we can all seek the refuge of the Sacraments.

We have more than a right to these precious gifts, we have a duty to make sure the next generation has access to Them.