Beautiful Horizons

Just in case you weren't sure...

Sarah Palin is some combination of a moron and a bigot.

With all of the negative and disturbing news about Catholicism...

...this uplifting and humanizing essay by a faithful member of the church is well worth your time.

Failing to See the Big Picture

I'm thrilled to see Bishop Oscar Romero receiving the attention and respect he deserves on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. I'm especially gratified to see at long last, the government of El Salvador sharing in that recognition.

Unfortunately, the likes of Bishop Romero are getting harder to find in the Roman Catholic Church. I write this as a regular mass-attending Roman Catholic and am simply disgusted by the Vatican's response to the continually unfolding scandals that are spreading across Europe, to the point where the official response is to smear the media reporting on the matter or this bit of tu quoque nonsense:

Earlier in the week, New York's archbishop, Timothy Dolan, used his blog to dismiss the New York Times' reports and defend the pontiff's record by arguing that authorities outside the church also are culpable. Stories about sexual abuse by priests were "fair" if "unending," he wrote. But he condemned the media for portraying child sexual abuse "as a tragedy unique to the church alone. That, of course, is malarkey."

Sadly, this latest everybody-is-responsible-so-nobody-is-to-blame defense is of a piece with a little-noticed section of Benedict's letter to the Irish church in which he seemed to blame the crisis, in part, on "new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society."

Let me dumb this down for the hierarchy at the Vatican: you are hemorrhaging members of your flock. You are desperate to recruit new priests. Without parishioners, you have no church. You're men first and right now, you appear to be a bunch of weak man busily covering your glutei to protect yourselves. Shame on you.

Bad faith...

Robert Draper, in the unlikely venue of "GQ", has a portrait of failed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that includes the bizarre and - frankly - disgusting information that Defense intelligence briefing papers for the Iraq war were routinely headlined by Biblical passages...

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground,  and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

 These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.

The complete article here.

People of (good) faith

I'm not a Catholic, nor an orthodox Christian of any stripe, but having grown up in a profoundly Christian family I've come to terms with my indelible "Christianity" - conflicted, agnostic and outside the boundaries of denominational orthodoxy as it may be.  I've always been suspicious of Catholicism's claims as the "true" church, but I've also gained respect for the commitment to truth and justice of many of the Church's institutions and traditions over the years - largely as I became aware of just how "un-monolithic" this apparent monolith actually is in practice.  Despite the "unifying" visage of the Papacy, there are almost as many roots and branches within the Catholic church as there are Protestant denominations. And there is a strong liberal wing that dates back at least to the papal affirmation of the rights of labor over a century ago and revitalized by the legacy of Pope John XXIII.

It is with this "Catholic complexity" in mind that I bring to your attention Brennan Bollman, the woman who is valedictorian of this year's graduating class at Notre Dame and whose response to the protests against Barack Obama giving the keynote graduation address is to affirm that the President's values, despite their differences over abortion rights, are consistent with the Christian faith and are not - despite protests by a handful of zealots - seen by Notre Dame graduates as divisive or unworthy of respect.

Good faith, openness to dialog and respect trump dogmatism and rancor. Brennan Bollman is the face of Catholicism's future - not dinosaurs like Pat Buchanan or William Donohue.

Ministering to His Flock

I'm glad to see to Fernando Lugo is president of Paraguay, breaking the Colorado Party's stranglehold on his nation's politics. Here's why I'm dedicating the following tune to him, notwithstanding the fact that I can't stand the Beach Boys:

Hey,a man of God is still a man . . .

Getting Your Church's Priorities Straight

If you want to prevent abortions from occurring, instead of excommunicating the doctors who treated her and the mother of the 36 kilogram, 1 meter 20 centimeters nine year old girl you expected to give birth to twins at the risk of her life, perhaps, instead, you can focus your energies on putting an end to the raping of young girls, and thus, reduce the number of therapeutic abortions.

Just a thought . . .

Coming to Their Senses?

Von at Obsidian Wings points me to this update on the excommunication of the doctors who performed the abortion on the 9 year old rape victim in Brazil and her mother, but he is mistaken if he thinks it means that the excommunications have been rescinded. This may clarify things:

[Archbishop Rino] Fisichella stressed that abortion is always "bad." But he said the quick proclamation of excommunication "unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy."

The Vatican teaches that anyone performing or helping someone to have an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the church, and the Vatican prelate underlined that abortion is "always condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act."

"There wasn't any need, we contend, for so much urgency and publicity in declaring something that happens automatically," Fisichella wrote.

Writing as if he were addressing the girl, Fisichella said: "There are others who merit excommunication and our pardon, not those who have allowed you to live and have helped you to regain hope and trust."

It appears that the objection is to the public aspect of it, although one gets the impression from the article that Archbishop Fisichella is disturbed as well by the utter lack of compassion on behalf of the Archbishop of Recife as well as the fact that he publicly proclaimed that the rapist stepfather would not be excommunicated, because according to him, abortion is worse than rape.

There remains the possibility that less reactionary more compassionate minds will prevail. After all, the excommunication of a Holocaust denier was rescinded . . .

Stay tuned.

How to Drive Your Church to the Margins

I am a Roman Catholic and am disturbed by this:

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians.

Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. "They took the life of an innocent," Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. "Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored."

The girl would have had her life endangered if the baby had been brought to term. Regardless of how one feels on the subject, as Steve Benen notes, "A lot of phrases come to mind when describing all of this, but "pro-life" isn't one of them."

No it isn't. The church is hemorrhaging membership and the dreaded Edir Macedo see an opening:

Evangelicals have not projected a united pro-life platform in Brazil, certainly not one as monolithic as the Catholic Church's. But at least one major sect, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, has taken a stance that showcases its differences with its Catholic rival. The Universal Church's television channel TV Record recently aired spots featuring a woman declaring, "I decided who to marry. I decided to use the pill. With my vote I decided who'd be elected President. I decided to work so that I won't be discriminated against. Why can't I decide what to do with my own body? Women should be able to decide for themselves what's important."

A church that does not respond to the needs of its membership will continue to lose members. Without members, there is no church. How I wish John XXIII could come back.

There's also this bit of nonsense.

Rev. Joseph Lowery delivers the inaugural benediction.

Reverend Lowery's benediction was a high point of the inauguration IMHO. The first part of civil rights veteran Rev. Lowery's prayer is from "Lift Every Voice", aka "The Negro National Anthem" penned by James Weldon Johnson. A latter segment is improvised from a blues song popularized by Big Bill Broonzy.