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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Catholic Church’
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 [...]
Steal a Priest
“Estimates are that one in six Catholic priests currently serving in the States comes from abroad, and roughly 300 new international priests arrive every year.” (John Allen, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/foreign-priests-and-risk-plunder) I have a definitely biased reaction to that statement. I’m a former priest, who had to leave the clerical club because I wanted to also find God [...]
