Excellent Post at Boston Catholic Insider on Adult Faith Formation in Boston

The inmates are running the asylum.


While we are on the subject, Fr. Unni at St. Cecilia's continues to earn his reputation.  In this week's lesson, parishioners are told that if they want to know God's love, they 'better find somebody to love'.

They seem to have a rock and roll theme going. Theology from Queen.

Lord what you're doing to me 

I have spent all my years in believing you

But I just can't get no relief, Lord!

Somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody...Can anybody find me somebody to-ooo-oooh-oh-oh.. lo-o-o-ovvve?

God's mission is to love creation?

Not in Catholic theology it isn't.   God's mission is the salvation of souls.

God's being is love. God's being is God's mission. We have to participate in the mission of justice, forgiveness, mercy, peace.

Again, this is not Catholic theology.   We can forgive each other of transgressions but we do not have the power to pardon sin.  That is an act of Christ's Church alone which is the entire mission of the Catholic Church.

The disunity in the Church can be traced back to problems, errors, disagreements, concerning doctrine of God and the biggest errors in the doctrine of God are connected to an abstraction of God's being from God's mission.  When we bifurcate from the mission of God, we make God into an abstraction and idol we can control and please.  When we have relations among ourselves and creation, we obtain knowledge of God and set ourselves free.  

Get it?

LOL.

Let me tell you something.  If you're going to St. Cecelia's and personal life is such a train wreck that you are all alone in the world, there is another problem going down that needs fixing.

No doubt somebody will come along and tell me I have not cracked Fr. Unni's passive-aggressive code correctly, but nevertheless, I shall proceed in explaining how the theology errs to those who read it and are educated in their faith. The piece actually gets some parts of Catholic theology correct.

From our parents, to strangers we serve or even meet on the street all of our human relationships and interactions do indeed (or are supposed to!) have some of the same qualities as the love of God.    The problem with the piece is, it reduces knowledge of God and love of God to filial love and interactions.

Both of the subjects of God and love are complicated ones and my explanation is limited to address, as simply as possible, the errors in the article.

We experience the qualities and characteristics of God's love in human love and service, but human love, from filial to eros, is not the source of knowledge of God.   The Love of God is Truine in Spirit.  It informs through the Holy Spirit and the source of that love are the Sacraments (the son) and teachings of the Church (the Father's love - parental).

Fr. Unni teaches love without obedience, honor, devotion and fidelity to God's teachings. His fairy tales about love is much like a cartoon caricature of marital love defined as a husband maintaining a sexual relationship outside of marriage and when the wife catches him shacking up, he tries to ratify marital love by telling her he serves in the soup kitchen.

Straw man's arguments, ad nauseum.

An excellent resource to rebut Fr. Unni's errors this week is HERE.

There are three stages in our love for God: servile love, mercenary love and filial love. The word servile derives from “servant”.  

A servant (or employee) does his master’s will out of fear of punishment. Likewise, beginners in the spiritual life do God’s will, obey the Commandments, avoid sin, and go to Mass on Sunday.. 

A mercenary is a soldier who fights because he is paid, not because he is committed to the cause of defending home and country. Colonel Gadhafy hires sub-Saharan mercenaries to help him survive as the dictator of Libya. Our love for God is mercenary when it is focused on our gain, on what we hope to get from God, rather than on what we want to give God. Here is a great trap for many of us, and a trap we remain caught in for many years if not a whole lifetime. Even Jesus’ close friends, James and John, were hoping to have positions of honor when Jesus established His kingdom. We must constantly strive to purify our motives and our faith in order to put God and His will first. 

Filial love, the love of a son or daughter for their Father whom we love for His own sake. Why? Because God is total Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Being, everything our heart was made for! Human analogies may help: spouses and friends are able to love each other more than their own selves, and are ready to sacrifice everything for their beloved. This third degree of love is called by the Greek word, Agape, in the New Testament. It is divine love. Jesus lives it, and only His grace enables us to live it. It will help if we constantly practice love of God and neighbor and if we constantly ask for this grace to do everything we do out of pure love for God and neighbor. In our prayer, whether personal or liturgical, we need to concentrate on loving God for His own sake and avoid seeking for signs and “prayer experiences” and good feelings. We need naked trust in God’s pure, tender and merciful love for ourselves. Let us imitate the “Our Father” prayer which Jesus gives us as the model of all prayer. There Jesus teaches us to first seek to give glory and obedience to the Father before asking for any our own legitimate needs. This heals our soul.

The reality is, there are parishes that are menace to our salvation and the diocese is a rudderless ship.

I still say that Boston Catholics need to beef up the blogging community with a blog that is specifically designed to guide Catholics to parishes that are teaching the faith and steer them away from parishes where catechesis is dangerous.  One that takes inventory of each parish and writes a brief synopsis of what kind of catechesis is going down.  What priest is ramming what down the throats of uncatechized Catholics, shenanigans that invalidate the Sacred Liturgy or even if valid - rises to the level of disrespect.

Another 'someday' project!

Hope you are all having a great holiday weekend.

Fr. Tad: Gay Genes, Sexual Attractions and the Call to Chastity

Was the Pilot welcome at Fr. Unni's digs this week?

Fr. Tad has an excellent article called Gay Genes, Sexual Attractions and the Call to Chastity.

"Sherif Gergis summarizes this idea in a recent article: "We do not pretend to know the genesis of same sex attraction, but we consider it ultimately irrelevant to this debate. On this point, we agree with same sex marriage advocate Professor John Corvino: 'The fact is that there are plenty of genetically influenced traits that are nevertheless undesirable. Alcoholism may have a genetic basis, but it doesn't follow that alcoholics ought to drink excessively. Some people may have a genetic predisposition to violence, but they have no more right to attack their neighbors than anyone else. Persons with such tendencies cannot say 'God made me this way' as an excuse for acting on their dispositions.'"

I was born to use the word bitches when I see them. Doesn't make it right!

What Congregants Won't Hear From Fr. Unni

Still waiting for Chuck's piece to be published to post the homily and in the meanwhile, people are working on trying to improve the sound. If the quality is good enough to transcribe it, we'll work on a transcript.

How Chuck translates the message in Fr. Unni's homily is important in the discussion as I believe it will provide the opportunity to see exactly where Fr. Unni isn't being honest. He isn't being honest to parishioners at St. Cecilia's and he isn't being honest about the treatise of the Rainbow Ministry which is operated by individuals who oppose the moral teachings of the Church and leads others to oppose them.

The Catholic Church is not a place we go once a week to be nice to each other, although that is certainly part of a Catholic Community in providing ministries to serve the needs of the parish. It is a place we go to be taught the moral teachings of the Church to use that knowledge to judge our own actions against those teachings. We come to use the Sacraments to bolster our efforts to bring our defiant spirit into surrender. We amend our lives.

We've had many discussions in the com boxes this week with St. Cecilia's parishioners. They are masters at taking things out of context to grant license to sin and scandal.

Oh, the Church teaches us to check in with our own brains to get guidance (but says nothing about making sure our consciences have been formed and are consistent with Church teaching).

Oh, she was just an Altar server wearing an alb giving out Communion (but says nothing about the five priests sitting on their fannies)

When you bring out the proper context, the beautiful people get rather hostile and vulgar. This is the fruit of John Unni's ministry.

We'll explore the reasons why when the other pieces of the puzzle as soon as Chuck's piece gets published.

Meanwhile, here is the final part of Fr. Landry's discussion on St. Cecilia's: The Gospel of Chastity.

For the last two weeks, we’ve been examining some of the larger issues that have been raised by the controversy over a Mass at St. Cecilia’s in Boston to welcome those who celebrate gay pride. We’ve mentioned that those with same-sex attractions deserve and need the full and authentic pastoral care of the Church. Those who are “gay” — meaning those who celebrate sexual activity and culture based on same-sex attractions —are in even greater need of the full teaching of the Catholic Church, since in addition to the normal need for pastoral accompaniment and assistance in resisting temptations they also are vulnerable to severe attacks against the faith, considering that gay orthodoxy involves the rejection of Biblical and magisterial teaching on sexual morality and marriage, and therefore the denial of the authority of Scripture and of the Church.

Central to the Church’s full and authentic pastoral care of those with same-sex attractions is the assistance to live a chaste life. When mention is made of this call to chastity, some in the gay movement shriek with exasperated incredulity, as if chastity were a death sentence to a loveless life or, worse, some type of medieval castration ceremony executed in subterranean Vatican dungeons. Chastity, however, is the precondition for any real love.

Take the time to read it in its entirety. Peace to all who read it.

God bless him for tackling the complexities of this latest scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston.

It is the substance that is cleverly subverted by Fr. Unni.

Fr. Unni's Message on the Parable of the Sower: "The Nomatterwhatness of God Fills Us With Mercy"

I'll bet you never heard that one before. I'm wishing I never heard it, but I'll get to how Fr. Unni got that message out of the parable of the sower in a minute. First, some good news:

Parishioners at St. Cecilia's were told that though they billed today's Mass at St. Cecilia's as a 'welcome' Mass, everyone is welcome at all Masses - said he thought everyone has known that all along.

He also stopped referring to faithful Catholics as hate mongers. We are now known at St. Cecilia's as the people who "don't get it". And, we're in good company because the Pope and 2000 years worth of Church teachings are with us.

You have to love the irony that today's Gospel was the parable of the sower, where the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are lost to people whose souls are inadequately prepared to receive the Word.

Enough suspense.

Fr. Unni's homily explained exactly whose souls are inadequately prepared to receive the Word - it's the 'hard liners' and religious authorities who just 'don't get it'.

You see, Jesus opposed religious authority because He said stupid stuff like everyone was welcome, come to Him wracked with shame, whether you are gay or a prostitute or any other person on the margins. Religious authority and hard liners don't get it. Remember that Nicodemus came through the roof.

Fortuitously, he read the Gospel of Matthew before and after the parable of the sower and you know what he found? That Christ said if he had gone to Sodom and did what He did for outcasts, they would have gotten it.

Get it?

No?

He knew this was all going to be open for misinterpretation, but he is not giving the green light -no no - it's about loving people taking care of other people.

Jesus said 'these people' are people who lay heavy burdens and rules upon you but if you come to Him, He will give you rest. Know who you are. God sees who you are and He will give you rest. Stand in your own strength.

Do you get it, he asked?

I was only one in the pews around me shaking my head 'no' but there must have been others because he went on to clarify what he was talking about. That's when he gave the quote that ties it all together. It's all about shame and compassion. Shame bad. Compassion good.

He had a book written by "Greg Boyle" who apparently explains that shame is at the root of all addiction. God loves all woundedness into health. God finds in them total acceptability in their being. Self cannot survive without love. The absence of self-love is shame. The sinner is the outcast. Shame speaks lies. You're not at home with yourself. If we don't believe in ourselves, we will never come to the Table. If somebody tells you that you can't come to the Table, it isn't the Catholic religion.

So much for the theology of unworthy reception of the Eucharist but I digress.

If we don't believe in ourselves, we will never come to the Table. Let shame go because the nomatterwhatness of God fills us with mercy.

The strategy of Jesus was not about taking the right stand on issues, it is about standing in the right place. Compassion stands in awe of what others carry in life rather than judging them. Jesus eats with them, that's it. He eats with them. Eating with outcasts renders them acceptable.

Some people ask him why he needs a Rainbow Ministry. He tells them he listened to gay older men in their 60s, 70s and 80s - and all you say is tell me a story of who is feeling squashed - there needs to be a place. People saying this is the Unni gospel of sodomy just don't get it. With compassion, margins get erased.

The seed is God's compassion and acceptance. What kind of soil are we?

Are we stingy or open?

Everyone is holy love. There is no shame. Shame is healed. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Do we get it?

And with that, he flung open his vestments and swirled around like he was getting ready to fly, and up the stairs he went as the congregation broke open into wild applause. (In fact, there was a lot of clapping throughout the whole Mass, which I don't have the wherewithall to describe right now.)

I am not putting words in Unni's mouth - these are all his words. Somebody taped the homily. As soon as I receive it, we'll get it uploaded to the internet. I can't even get into the nightmare of the intercessions.

I couldn't count the times I was brought to my knees in reparation, my heart moved with pity for the gentle, kind and loving souls surrounding me, being so spiritually abused. God help them.

It doesn't take much to find how frightening Fr. Unni's gospel of no shame actually is, as one of our readers found a St. Cecilia bulletin dated October 24, 2010 with a printed article by Michael Gelenfield who has been accused of repeated sexual abuse. Not even repeated sexual abuse is to be ashamed of at St. Cecilia's. Shame speaks lies, let shame go because the nomatterwhatness of God fills him with mercy, total acceptability in his being.

Wasn't this the problem?

Oh wait..I think I get it now...being a friend of the Catholic hierarchy has its perks, doesn't it.

CJ Doyle's Press Release - Archdiocese Abandons St. Cecilia's

Loving in the Truth at St. Cecilia's - What Would Jesus Do?

If you go to the Mass today, please, be wise and gentle.

All who come to an event that is pitched as an open invitation from the Church are bruised reeds. Above all else, our desire is to bring them to conversion.

It is true that some will come to make this some kind of territorial and cultural victory over the Deposit of Faith. But God can even use our stupid ideas to see if He can get us on the hook. He has the ability to soften the hardest of hearts.

I am living proof.

We don't want to engage in any battle in the cultural war waged by anyone, because souls rebelling are so far from a state of Grace, clonking them on the head on way into the door could cause them to rebel further - and perhaps they will never approach the Deposit of Faith.

The goal is to drive out the false teaching and bring in Courage. There is a time and place to continue with these goals. The people coming to Church today, they are not the parties that will help us achieve this goal. That battle is at 66 Brooks Drive and the Holy See.

Let's welcome, pray and see if Unni has been kicked onto the right trajectory. If he is not, we pick up that battle tomorrow.

These are my thoughts, for what they are worth.

As promised, here's the link to Fr. Landry's theological follow-up on the dung Fr. Unni is feeding the flock at St. Cecilia's. It is magnificent.

Last week we began a look at the controversy at St. Cecilia’s Church in Boston over the scheduling of a Mass originally advertised to celebrate “gay pride” and then after criticism postponed and relabeled to a “welcoming Mass,” which while perhaps no longer explicitly extolling gay pride still seems poised to give no-questions-asked hospitality to those who believe that gay pride should be glorified, including within the context of a Catholic Mass.

We noted that the controversy raises several concerns that extend beyond a particular parish or archdiocese with regard to the authentic pastoral care the Church owes those immersed in a gay lifestyle or in any lifestyle that exalts practices that are incompatible with the Gospel. The only adequate Christian response to anyone is love, but this love can never remain a shallow hospitality that fails to help the person recognize and respond to the rather conspicuous ways Christ is challenging him to turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel. Particularly with those ensconced in a gay lifestyle — which is a way of life built on regarding several basic truths of anthropology, sexual morality, marriage, Scriptural inspiration, and magisterial authority as antiquated and repressive “hang-ups” from which people need to be liberated — the Church’s charity must always be bound to the compassionate, clear and compelling presentation of the fullness of the truth that alone can set them free (Jn 8:32). The stakes of the Church’s failure to carry out this service to the truth are huge, not only for those presently involved in a gay lifestyle, but also for the conscience formation of all in the Church and society....

With that in mind, we will examine three common falsehoods that have come to the surface in the St. Cecilia’s controversy to which the Church must respond with the truth.

Read his brilliant examination and thesis.

It is a masterpiece on answering the question "What would Jesus do".

Not to undermine the theology, so lovingly and gracefully delivered, I wanted, especially for today, to point out the following:

The third falsehood relates to the common calumny that any opposition to the gay agenda, or any criticism of a “gay pride Mass,” comes exclusively from “homophobia” or “hatred” for those with same-sex attractions, as a few members of St. Cecilia’s alleged in interviews with the media. While there’s no dispute that, sadly, in some places real homophobia does exist, ministers to the gay community have a duty not only not to abet this confusion but to disabuse those entrusted to their care from thinking the Church’s teachings on same-sex activities are based on hatred rather than love grounded in truth; they also have the responsibility to remind them that judging others or mendaciously bullying others with epithets about their character are grave sins that those with same-sex attractions are not exempt from committing.

These false accusations, however, lead to a larger point about how much the tide has turned with regard to the direction of bullying between those with same-sex attractions and others in society. Whereas in the past, those with same sex attractions were often subject to ill-treatment and ridicule on account of their attractions, including sadly by those who claimed to be Christian, now it’s Christians who are often subjected to ridicule and, in a growing number of cases, discrimination. If anyone doubts this point, they should just ponder what Constance Cervone of Jamaica Plain said in a June 28 Boston Globe article on St. Cecilia’s: “It was harder for me … to come out as a Catholic than as a gay person.” This is an indication that, at least for her, “Christianophobia” is presently more menacing than “homophobia.” The Church as a whole, and those who minister to the gay community in particular, must have the courage to address this.

These things should be pondered today - and every day going forward when dealing with Fr. Unni and the souls being led by his chaotic spiritual leadership.

The third in Fr. Landry's series comes next week.

Prayers today for all.