At the age of 82, my good friend Hans Küng is still at it. He launched a new book on March 10 (the same day his former university colleague, Joseph Ratzinger — a.k.a. Benedict XVI — launched Part II of his book on Jesus). The title of Küng’s book in English, Can the Church Still [...]
Posts under ‘Catholic Church’
The Catholic Church Burns While the Bishops Fiddle
Two items crossed my desk and mind yesterday. Together, they evoked Nero and his fiddle. The first was an excellent article by my fellow parishioner at Ascension Parish on 107th Street, Peter Steinfels. It’s titled “Further Adrift,” playing on the title of his 2004 book, A People Adrift, and showing that in the light of [...]
Not So Easy, your Holiness!
Pope Bendict XVI’s recent efforts to deal with the clergy sexual abuse problem are not only too feeble; they’re downright dangerous. The National Catholic Reporter reported on Benedict’s sermon for his general audience on Sept 8 with this lead: “The problem of abuse by clergy is solved more by a spirit of penitence and conversion [...]
The Pope Just Doesn’t Get It!
He may be infallible. But he sure can screw up when it comes to public relations. That was painfully clear in the latest Vatican publication of “Substantive Norms” on how it is going to get tough on priest pedophiles. As reported in the New York Times and in the National Catholic Reporter, the document, in [...]
A “Spiritual Reaganomics” in the Catholic Church?
That’s one of the statements that echoed in my mind and feelings as I flew home from the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America, in Cleveland, June 10-13. This image of a “spiritual Reaganomics” operating within the Catholic Church was offered in the Plenary Address by Catherine Clifford and Richard Gaillardetz to [...]
Pope Benedict, May I quote Josef Ratzinger?
In a recent article in the New York Review of Books on the morass of pedophilia crimes and cover-ups facing Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, Anthony Grafton offers these words of encouragement and hope for bewildered Catholics: “Again and again, Catholics have proved astonishingly resilient and inventive, and have come forward to offer what [...]
Can This Be the Will of God?
For the past week, I’ve not been able to shake from my imagination the image that Maureen Dowd described in her op-ed column in the New York Times on April 11. She contrasted “educated and sophisticated young professional women” in Saudi Arabia who put up with “an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic [...]
Where’s the “dictatorship of relativism”?
In a March 28 article on the present plight of the Pope and priestly pedophilia (wow, I didn’t intend that alliteration!), the NEW YORK TIMES wrote: “As archbishop, Benedict expended more energy pursuing theological dissidents than sexual predators.” They’re referring to the early 80s, when Pope Benedict was Cardinal Ratzinger presiding over the diocese of Munich. [...]
YOUR HOLINESS, LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Your Holiness, I hope this letter somehow reaches you. I think it might help you find a way out of the mess you are in. I’m referring to the accusations being made that you allowed a priest, Fr. Peter Hullermann, who had been identified as a pedophile in the diocese of Essen back in 1980, [...]
For the Vatican: “Poor Me” = Poor Response
A major part of the Vatican response to investigations into sexual abuse of minors by priests in Germany and more specifically into a sacerdotal abuser in the Munich archdiocese when Pope Benedict XVI was Archbishop Ratzinger, in charge of that diocese, has been “poor me.” The NEW YORK TIMES titled its article of March 13 [...]
