Interesting Day Post Mortem

I'm still trying to process the backlash from the detractors and the fantastic round ups of bloggers.

On the one hand we have dissenters who have been using Cardinal Bernadin's diaper for 40 years to undermine the seriousness of killing infants who are behaving rather badly.

I don't want to get specific, but I had an exchange with somebody whose name rhymes with Snarlson where we were characterized as disobedient ecclesial campaigning crowing pride-filled egotistical superior mocking sedevanasit gossip slandering mongerers lacking humility and taking credit for what happened.  Satan prevails in the Church sometimes and we are confusing pollitical rehtoric for religious sentiment and politically smearing and dragging bishops through the mud.   But the worst part was his contemptible mischaracterization of Bp. Dolan as having the same poor judgment as Bp. Kicanas when it comes to sexual abusers.

I can't tell whether prudence was thrown out the window when I invited him to be tarred and feathered and thrown under the bus or when I called his sore looser attack on Bishop Dolan despicable.  Why doesn't Henry just put on the proabortion and sexual immoralikty sash and be done with the intellectual dishonesty.   Have convictions and be a man about them instead of hiding your dissent behind these silly tortured campaigns to try to shut people up who are whistleblowing about internal corruption.

It has got to go.

Don't miss MSW.  It is a must read for those of us in Boston who have been building the whistleblowing Church Militant crusade.

There is one other aspect of the story that I alluded to yesterday and which was confirmed for me by several bishops. The attacks on Bishop Kicanas in the last week before the election worked. These attacks focused on Kicanas’ service as a seminary rector, when he recommended for orders a man who went on to be a child molester. Kicanas had answered the charges at the time and there was nothing to them, but on the eve of the election, when the CNN ticker had an item about “Top bishop denies promoting child molester,” I knew there was trouble for Kicanas. Survivors’ groups unwittingly did the bidding of the most conservative bishops by joining in the attacks. If that were not enough, the gay activists in the Rainbow Sash movement sealed Kicanas’ fate when they “endorsed” him, a classic case of failing to anticipate the opposition. Still, I had anticipated there might be a sympathy backlash for Kicanas, not least because – whatever the bishops intended – some on the right now think they possess a “heckler’s veto” over USCCB elections. Throw enough mud at the last minute, and they can stop someone they do not like from winning. They sent text messages to bishops. They called the bishops’ rooms at the hotel. It was ugly. But, no bishop wanted to return to his diocese and be pummeled with questions about Kicanas’ treatment of a sexual abuser. There was enough smoke to suggest a fire, and the bishops have no desire to be burned on that score anymore.

Someone we don't like...for no good reason.   (rolling eyes)

Pardon me, but aren't these the people who wanted to lay people to be more vocal and Bishops more responsive and who just spent the last ten years whining about pedophile enablers?

Congratulations.  The chicken has come home to roost.

Like everyone else, I found the Rainbow Sash statement fascinating.   Note they mention a 'hard right' toward...the Republican party and Tea Party.  Evidently, the Pope is no longer even in the picture to the picture to them. I will say one thing for them - they at least have the decency to be honest and forthright about their convictions.

Here's Grant Gallicho's end game:

I wonder whether Rainbow Sashers knew exactly what they were doing, and are happy to use Kicanas’s loss to raise awareness–and money.

But what about the rest? Text messages? Phone calls to bishops’ hotel rooms? The attacks from conservatives may not have been the only thing that torpedoed his candidacy, but do the bishops who voted against Kicanas because of that smear campaign recognize they just caved in to the swiftboating of a brother bishop–and it could happen to them?

Everyone I think saw what happened to Cardinal Law and are acutely aware that dissenters have had them by the spines.  What happened was when orthodox Catholics also rose to hold them accountable, they had nothing left to loose and they simply just did the right thing.

Catholic World Report has a fabulous piece about the unraveling of the seamless garment which our friends from BHE have posted with commentary HERE.

The media casts Kicanas’ defeat and Dolan’s win as a “traditionalist” victory. But that is overstating it. For one thing, Dolan—though he sees himself walking in the footsteps of John O’Connor—is far from a confrontational conservative. According to the media’s telling, the “moderate” lost and the “conservative” won. But it is more accurate to say that the moderate won and the liberal lost. In reality, the immediate outcome of the USCCB election has to do primarily with the slow unraveling of the “Seamless Garment” and the aftershocks of the abuse scandal. Bernardin’s dream of the USCCB as a Vatican-resistant body of progressive political opinions was simply overtaken by the nightmare of clerical corruption.

BTW - do not miss the spectacular BHE trip down memory lane that notes the devastating effects of the Bernadin/Hehir seamless garment.

There are many who will try to tell you that Bernadin meant well by defining the failure to shut lights off in your home to save energy or littering on the same level of seriousness as executing unborn children in the womb.  I don't buy into it.  The fruit of the tree is just too rotten.  It was long past time to take the ax to the root

Speaking of which - do check out our blogging friend Tim who is working on an unfaithful schools blog.  He's got some reading on Boston College that is quite informative.

Screwball Stories at the National Catholic Reporter

When religious leaders are making a mockery out of Catholic teaching, this week's scripture readings focusing on the Pharisees are some of the favorites in their bag of tricks.

This is how it usually goes:

While going through puberty and young adulthood, Johnnie goes to St. Susannah's, listens to Fr. J and learns that the Pope is wrapped too tight, the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, contraception and whatever have you are antiquated.  This is usually in spite of the fact that somebody, their mother, father, grandparents, teachers in school - somebody has constantly taught Johnnie truth from lies, right from wrong and planted the seeds.  But Fr. J, he's the man, he's a priest - what do you know Mom!

Johnnie keeps going to Church and listening to Fr. J talk about how when Jesus died on the Cross, He saved us all!

That's right.  There's no such thing as Hell.  You don't have to pay attention to anything the Church teaches.     Each of us makes up our own mind about whether something is good or bad, sin or virtue.  When Christ said He had to return to Heaven so the Paraclete could come and guide us, He was talking about you and I.

One Sunday morning when the alarm went off at 7 am, Johnnie didn't feel like getting up and going to Church.   He rolled out of bed, dragged himself into the powder room to brush his teeth and he looked at the paraclete in the mirror and said, "What am I DOING?  I am already saved!", and he crawled back into bed.

After ten years of having difficulty weathering the storms in his life, he finds himself so miserable he starts to pray and goes back to Church.   There's a solid priest who teaches him that when you love your family and friends you do things to please them - even when you don't understand why they want you to, or you don't feel like doing it -- and the same goes for God.  The lights to the teachings of the Church go on.

Then something funny happens.   He goes back to visit Fr. J and spends time explaining his enthusiasm and love for God.  One day, about a week after teaching his 10th grade CCD class at Fr. J's at parish about Humanae Vitae and the moral theology of the Roman Catholic Church, he gets called into Fr. J's office.  Johnnie learns parishioners are upset with him.  Who is he to talk after all the immoral things he did in his life.  He's a hypocrite.  A zealot.    A pharisee who cleans the cup on the outside but inside he's filthy.   Johnnie gets the boot from Fr. J's parish.

When somebody wants to debunk Church teaching, they reach back into your past to find something scandalous you did to our Lord to make you look disingenuous.

Christ called people "pharisees" who teach truth and virtue people who clean their own cup on the outside but inside they're filthy.

But Christ was not talking about people who, after a conversion, uses the Sacraments to keep their souls in a state of grace and teaches truth and virtue.

I rarely read the National Catholic Reporter because seeing people scandalized is a near occasion of sin for me.  I loathe what they are doing to Christ and to His people.  I get dispirited.  But this week, there are two stories that are really screwball, even for them.

One was a story written by Michael Sean Winters about Fr. Rober Sirico of EWTN.  I never knew Fr. Sirico's history but apparently he was a protestant minister who belonged to a gay Church and performed gay marriages.

Like the rest of us who had a conversion, Fr. Sirico obviously surrendered this life at the foot of the cross when he flew to the Sacraments.  

 I have spoken about this numerous times in various settings. The concomitant development of my thoughts and spiritual life led to the abandonment of the left-wing ideas I held in that period and to my formal return to the Church. From that time some 35 years ago to the present I have faithfully believed in and practiced that faith.

Winters goes on to excoriate Fr. Sirico here.    I'll save you the agony and wading through the sewer of Winters mind and tell you his complaint.  Fr. Sirico is sanctimonious.

And of course, Michael Sean Winters implies Fr. Sirico is gay.

But, the kicker for me in this story is that the National Catholic Reporter is a gay newspaper.   What is a gay staff writing for a gay newspaper doing throwing somebody who used to do gay marriages under the bus?

Is Winters the staff homophobe?

Fr Sirico states his love for Christ eloquently:

As I have pondered these matters, I have come to one simple conclusion, and that is that I love the truth more than my freedom; indeed, that I love the truth more than myself, because it is only in the embrace of that Truth, Who is also the Way and the Life, that my own life will ever have any meaning or peace. I fully understand that for some people it is a difficult thing to say ‘yes’ to something that appears and even deeply feels, like a denial of one’s own self. Yet, that is precisely what Jesus asks of us. To say yes to the Cross is to say yes to the Risen One. As one prelate of the Second Vatican Council (Cardinal Journet) said, under different but for him no less arduous circumstances, “When one tears something dear away from us, and when this is demanded of us in the name of obedience – for a future which is yet hidden from us – one must say yes, one must be content in saying yes, one must be content even to feel suffering…But it is with happiness one suffers, for he has something to give to God.   

How tragic is the bitterness of doing a smear campaign, even somebody who understands, is empathetic, who once even performed gay marriages -  by virtue of the fact that the person turns their life over to Christ and the Catholic Church, NCR will do a smear campaign?

This is so low that I find it hard to believe that even the spiritually deprived readers of NCR will not find this despicable.

Tom Roberts has the second story -

It is obvious that Roberts is wild at the appointment of Archbishop Burke to cardinal-designate and goes on the attack.

Roberts gripes that AB Burke advocates for a standard of proof before removing a priest from his ministry for an allegation of sexual abuse.  That's a pretty legal standard in civil law and canon law.   AB Burke serves truth, justice and Christ.

Of course, people like Cardinal O'Malley and Tom Roberts trample the rights of accused and innocent priests - violating their civil and canonical rights--but they will get the reward they deserve on their day of judgment.  Good luck with that.

I don't think AB Burke wants to be among that group and so he serves truth, justice and Christ.

The National Catholic Reporter is swimming in slime.   It is an ugly sight.

The Fall and The Rise of Catholic Warriors

I wanted to add my observations and comments to a post at Inside Catholic that should be of much interest to Catholic Warriors.

Before I exorcise the merits of Michael Sean Winters' post at NCR, a little sidebar:

Can somebody enlighten me about what it is with the NCR crowd that causes the peculiar and annoying habit of gluing their middle name to their identity?

I'm sure it has something to do with years of reading and experiencing the drivel and like Pavlov's dog, as soon as I see someone using their full middle name instead of using a middle initial like the rest of us...but...Carol Mary McKinley places it among the strange and somewhat creepy phenomenon of people who speak of themselves in the third person.

As to the substance of Winters' screed, there are some interesting things for warriors to note.

First, the cycle of grassroots activism follows a path.

You work under the radar to build momentum on various levels. As momentum builds, when it reaches a certain point various levels of higher placed people start to join you and there is a more public aspect to the grassroots movement. If successful, it becomes the culture that drives academia, law and governance. In the case where this activism is taking hold in a religion, it drives theology.

When a power structure is on the way down, and out, it falls in the same way. When it reaches a certain downward motion, the higher-level people walk away.

Let me explain how this works in Catholicism:

The NCR's people took the reigns of theology in the Bernadin/post-Vatican II era.

For many years,they had numerous Bishops in the USCCB publicly advancing their causes. In the last decade, this dwindled. Many of their writings over the last few years griped about the inertia of Bishops who would not go out in public with them to advance their causes.

The turnaround of that ship came in 2003, when grassroots Catholics alerted higher level theologians, journalists, activists and leaders of a meeting that took place with several Bishops, including Cardinals McCarrick and Gregory to advance an agenda of dissent inside of the Catholic Church. Catholics in high-ranking positions put an end to future efforts by calling the same Bishops to the table of accountability.

This was the beginning of the tail spin as their Bishops had to retreat to under the radar level.

As grassroots leaders kept an eye on Bishops, they were afraid to have anything to do with meeting with dissenters. If you do some diligence on what NCR journalists and activists write about the Bishops during 2008 election, you will see that they gripe about not being able to engage a single Bishop.

This causes demoralization of grassroots. Then comes inertia.

This is a familiar pattern for seasoned activists. We see the fall or the rise - sometimes we see both.

From all accounts from moles and and even the Washington Post, there is chaos going on. Their own leaders are distancing themselves from them. In the world of activism, this is an indication of the state of affairs or our detractors and it is not good.

I'd be surprised to learn Winters is out of the loop on the status, but I suppose it could be he is not as connected as he tries to appear to be.


In any event, Hudson's article highlights how there was actually a flip in the power structure of the Catholic Church at the the level of the USCCB:

Mr. Winters, for reasons he does not reveal, believes “most bishops have come to realize what Hudson cannot bring himself to realize, that Sr. Carol might have been right, that there is no abortion funding in the health care overhaul. . . .”

I’m not aware of any bishops who have stated publicly what Mr. Winters believes “most bishops have come to realize.” That would mean either 100 bishops, if he were counting by dioceses, or over 150 if he is counting them in the aggregate.

If true, Mr. Winters is sitting on the biggest Catholic story to be written in 2010:

“Catholic Bishops Admit They Were Wrong About Obamacare and Abortion.”

Mr. Winters and the Bernadin crowd are not unaware of what has happened on the hierarchal level of the Bishops. Unless he doesn't read the National Catholic Reporter, he is bluffing on this.


But, what appears to be genuine is his ignorance of what the grassroots movement is up to now - freeing the deposit of faith on the parish and diocese level.

When there is a battle, you strike the shepherds and the sheeple flee. Their shepherds have been silenced and now, the battle is taking place on the lower levels.

Who are we 'taking our faith back' from?

Sister Mary Wear the Pants and Father Promote Promiscuity who have been heading up catechesis and the Mr. BigFat Wall Street Portfolio baiting Bishops into dissent by using their wealth and power.

It is not really surprising that Winters is unaware of what is going on in the grassroots. We don't worship in the same places. Even if they came to observe us, our parishes are not places where our grassroots movements take place. They are places of worship, places to listen to God, answer the call, fortify our spirit, fuel our courage and tenacity.

But it is puzzling he seems unaware of how the power structure operates, rises and falls. Hudson is not in the grassroots. He is a messenger of what the grassroots tells him and other higher ranking Catholics.


I can report, without exaggeration, that in Boston, the grassroots movement to take back our parishes and Chanceries from those who are now in place to dismantle the Catholic Church, is growing so rapidly we are recruiting people to help process and catalog the information and get plans in place to overthrow. Information is power. Brace yourselves, for there is a tsunami on its way. There are so many willing to serve, the growth spurt is going to take some time to organize.

At this juncture, many things happen. Reporting silences those who would ordinarily hold something dissenting in their parish. Because tomorrow, they will read about it in blogosphere. The Chancery acts quicker on dissent (as they did in the Hancock situation) because they no longer want their inertia to be reported in painstaking detail.

And, the ship slowly begins to navigate the turn.

I will also say for the record, that we are hearing from many who are in other dioceses, in other states, who are starting their own grassroots movements.

The one thing everyone knows about Deal is that he is the supreme networker. His article certainly is in keeping with what Boston Bloggers are experiencing in the grassroots. The power inside of the Catholic Church is shifting. Michael Voris reported on this a few weeks back.

Call it a Catholic Tea Party. Call it whatever you want. There is a movement well under way. If Sean Michael Winters doesn't know about it, doesn't see it, all the better - because he won't be reporting on it and the day will come when it will be an ambush.

All that has ever been needed is for Catholic warriors to stand up, take a deep breath and blow down their house of cards.

Speaking of which, here in Boston, don't miss the latest on one of the most formidable leaders of the Bernadin movement at Bryan Hehir Exposed: Bryan Hehir and Call to Action, Part 2.

Have a great Sunday. Carol Mary McKinley is off with her family apple picking, so she won't be blogging any more today.

:O)

Who is Michael Sean Winters? What is his shtick?

In this post, Michael Sean Winters tries to get people to believe if Domino's delivers pizza to Planned Parenthood, this is akin to the Catholic Conference of Bishops giving money to fund groups promoting abortions.

I see what he's saying.

Sorta like waitress at Bickfords  who served the Taliban before they hoped on the plane and crashed into the twin towers is the same level of cooperation with evil as the people funding them.

Maybe he's onto something.

Could the war on terror could be won peacefully if Homeland Security would only shut down the restaurants in airports?

The wisdom of Winters little story, the morals of which seem to escape me, are supposed to be the antithesis to Catholics outraged over the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' funding groups who lobby for abortion.

What doesn't Winters get about the distinctions between Catholic Bishops funding groups lobbying rights to kill other people and the guy delivering a pizza to Planned Parenthood?

The sole purpose of the Catholic Bishops is the Apostolic duty to uphold the teachings of the Church and guide the discernment of the Catholic population in the public square. The Church has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, training each Bishop in theology, philosophy, science, history and natural law.

The Church got the money to train these men from the Catholic consumers in the pews who expect a return on their money.

The money the Bishops are giving to groups who fund abortion has been given to the Bishops for the sole purpose of upholding the teachings of the Church so that their children and grandchildren, relatives, friends, neighbors and the faithful at large have the guidance they need to get into Heaven.

People making pizza, delivering pizza, eating pizza and disposing the remnants of our food into the dumps and incinerators aren't the institutions and people dedicated to uphold the teachings of the Church. Catholics in the pews aren't donating their money to the pizza store owner for the sole purpose of upholding the teachings of the Church.

A reader sent a post about Michael Sean Winters to me yesterday which was news to me.

I discovered that a guy I went to seminary with more than twenty years ago had turned into a kind of quixotic shill for the Catholic Church's opposition to DC Gay marriage. Michael Sean Winters was a very flamboyant gay man in the seminary. There is literally no other way to describe him. I always liked him in those days, and was always pleased that there did not seem to be any erotic energy between us. I liked hearing all his liberal postulations and glosses. I shared many of his views. But by nature I am more reserved about letting people know what I am thinking, even though gregariousness is a part of my nature. When I trust someone then it is a different story. Michael Winters was not someone you would trust, because he was really all over the place. It saddened me to hear other seminarians constantly make cruel fun of him for his psychological difficulties and his labyrinthine liberalism. I recall sitting in the refectory with him being entertained by his analysis of certain Church trends as "fascism". Being given personally to trying to understand systems of thought qua systems, I marveled that Michael did not seem to grasp in the inherently inhospitable nature of Catholic polity towards his logic, such as it was. Further, I remember humorously that Greg Rohde, who I think went on to be a Assistant Secretary of Commerce, was sitting there amazed by Michael's scattershot discussion, especially when he digressed into one of his favorite topics -- what a big girl our rector Larry Terrien was. (It really is amazing how far "big girls" go in the Roman Church. I remember seeing Terrien after I left the seminary in a famous gay restaurant in Dupont Circle).

This inability to understand the context of ideas still afflicts poor Michael Winters. Or Michael Sean Winters as he uses for his blogging. What can you say about a guy with such vaunted conceptual ambitions who spent many, many years as hostess with the mostess at Kramerbooks in Dupont. The chicken sandwich on focaccia was always good, and still is. It was always fun to run into him and hear about his perpetual search to get that doctorate in Church History. Fun and sad. Michael seemed more and more conceptually bereft as the years went on, ad the florid confidence of youth, settled into the bizarre juxtapositions of middle aged addled attempts at comprehensivess. Gossip replaced thought. It became too much to even listen to that at some point. It made me reflect on how hard it is to be a gay man in some ways. It brings psychological stresses for all of us. And the gay community has in some ways taken on that nasty fun-making cruelty I saw in those conservative seminarians. So I don't judge Michael. But I will not sit by while his mental confusion is used by right-wing nuts in the Catholic church to create a subtle conceptual space for their essential bigoted positions.

I'm not really tapped into the details of the characters posting Catholic dissent and so the fact that Winters is a gay man who was once in the seminary completely escaped me.

Interesting post here too.   (Occasionally, my friends or colleagues will say to me - what world are you living in!  "I don't know", I'll say,  "one that is gone 12 hours a day for work and then taking care of a house, family and friends?    I don't think we are reading the same blogs? " 


There is a lot to digest and discuss in this post, including the personal and spiritual impact of realizing the Church considers us "lost sheep" when our flesh and early desires leads us to reject Church teaching. At one point or another in our lives, we have all been there on one Church teaching or another. The alienation brings on a plethora of emotions that are very hard to set aside to get the motivation going to take a stab at understanding the the wisdom of the Church. Personally, I see promiscuity outside of Sacramental marriage, any promiscuity,pre-marital, extramarital, etc., as the same level of inequity in sin (apart from rape of course which piles theft on top of the sin of promiscuity).

Too much to discuss for this post, but a few observations about how Michael Sean Winters is conducting his apostolate are worth noting.

When Winters is discussing sins of promiscuity and abortion at America Magazine and the National Catholic Reporter, the twists and turns of his logic are always baiting people into malice for the teachings of the Church. He characterizes the people who have surrendered their will to the teachings of the Church,out in the public square teaching the tenets of the Catholic religion to others, as the enemy.

His posts give his readers the notion that the Church hates, which further alienates them from perhaps ever setting their emotions aside to conduct due diligence on the actual teachings of the Church. He's holding people hostage, away from the unconditional love of Christ and the Sacraments of His Church. I cannot imagine a worse offense against God.

I've spoken many times before about my own history (past history, thankfully) of railing against the teachings and disciplines of the Church - mostly about contraception and priestly celibacy vs. married priests. I was away from the Church and the Sacraments of the Church for several years. Fools they were in my eyes back then.

Like most mothers raised in the Catholic faith, there was enough seeds planted in my own conscience to want my own children to be raised Catholic and so I returned. When they were old enough for CCD, I went to the priest, told him I wanted to volunteer but spoke candidly about my feelings about the teachings of contraception. I made it clear to him that I would never pass on my own internal conflict to children and that I would study the wisdom of the Church and then teach it and keep my own doubts to myself. He agreed (to my surprise) to let me teach (which I did for ten years on the high school level).

Of course, teenagers have a way of posing questions that are actually quite deep. Because I was sincere in my own pursuit to not infect them with any scandal that they may take with them their whole life, I would often tell them their question was a good one that I would have to think about it, and do some research and get back to them on it. Off I'd go to do the research on how the Church answered their particular misgivings - really without the intention of learning it myself but crafting their answer so they would walk away with the fullness of the reasoning of the Church, while holding onto my own reservations.

It didn't take long before I realized they weren't the fools, I was! And, the next thing you know, I was teaching with conviction, zeal and fire.

Similar to life when friends come to us with troubles over a colleague at work, family, friends and we find ourselves giving them giving advice that we have been overlooking in a situation in our own lives. God in His mysterious ways sets things up so that we are imparting wisdom to others, He's killing two birds with one stone.

Personally, it's always a blow to me when the light goes on for me in those kinds of situations. Often, I've been struggling in dealing with a situation that I think I've been managing well but without real results. Realizing the divine intervention always catches me off guard. If you can't laugh at yourself, you're pretty much screwed in this life.

The picture in this post is another from my favorite artist William Bouguereau, a soul on it's way to Heaven.  

Feeding and fueling resentment and animosity over the tenets of the Catholic religion is causally related to the anguish and false sense of rejection of so many souls.   Can't they see what they're doing?  

Many times over at America Magazine, people have tried to post factual information about Church teaching.  They deliberately remove it or bar it.   What is going on there is more than confusion, it is a deliberate indoctrination into false teaching and fueling internal rage against Christ's Church.

 If you've got your own problems with the teachings of the Church, it's wiser to keep it to yourself.

Holding people hostage to your own animosity so that they're distracted from finding the wisdom of the Church?  Good luck with that in the hereafter.


Today's readings:


“This day the LORD, your God,
commands you to observe these statutes and decrees.
Be careful, then,
to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Today you are making this agreement with the LORD:
he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways
and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees,
and to hearken to his voice.