Sunday, April 24, 2011

Lahey's trial expected to reopen wounds (Post #124)

Excerpt from Canadian Catholic News: Lahey's trial expected to reopen wounds
OTTAWA — When Bishop Raymond Lahey goes to trial on child pornography charges May 4, the likely news coverage will reopen wounds caused by the worldwide clerical sexual abuse, regardless of the trial's outcome.  But observers say the pain provides an opportunity for needed renewal.  The former bishop of Antigonish was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography in October 2009.
Lahey's arrest followed the September 2009 seizure of his laptop and other electronic equipment upon his arrival in Ottawa airport in September 2009 by Canadian Border Service agents, upon his return to Canada from overseas.  The bishop had completed a multi-million dollar settlement for clerical sexual abuse victims in his diocese a month earlier, a package widely hailed by victims' groups as generous and compassionate.  Lahey has been living in a residence for retired priests in the Ottawa Archdiocese since October 2009.

"The first thing is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty and we should not jump to conclusions," said Father Frank Morrisey, a canon lawyer who has advised the Canadian Church on the clerical abuse crisis.  But Morrisey said in the present climate, with zero tolerance policies concerning sexual abuse, anyone who is accused is deemed "already guilty."  "It just makes it difficult for a person to have an objective trial no matter who that person is," he said.

"When the trial is in the public eye, and it will be, it will once again make the pain and distress of this issue more visible and more real," said Sister Nuala Kenny.  Kenny, a retired pediatrician who has advised the Canadian Church on the sexual abuse scandal since it first broke two decades ago in Newfoundland, declined to comment directly on Lahey's case.  "I think we're still as a Church kind of reeling from the magnitude of offences and allegations against priests and bishops," Kenny said. "When it becomes public again all of the raw surfaces are exposed again. It's not because, for most, that the pain is not there all of the time."

Sources include
http://wcr.ab.ca/WCRThisWeek/Stories/tabid/61/entryid/880/Default.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Lahey
http://www.antigonishdiocese.com/title.htm
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/menu-eng.html
http://www.theinquiry.ca/Morrissey.hide.php
http://www.ustpaul.ca/index.php?mod=employee&id=283
http://www.chac.ca/homepage/bio_nuala_kenny_08.pdf

Sunday, April 17, 2011

For New Mass, Closer to Latin, Critics Voice a Plain Objection (Post #123)

Excerpt from The New York Times: For New Mass, Closer to Latin, Critics Voice a Plain Objection

By Laurie Goodstein
April 11, 2011

Throughout much of the English-speaking world, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing its priests and parishes for the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the church permitted English in place of the Latin.
The changes are included in a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal, a translation produced after almost 30 years of labor, intrigue and infighting. The new missal, the book of texts and prayers used in the Mass, is intended to be closer to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries than the current version. The church officials promoting it say it will bring an elevated reverence and authenticity to the Mass. Many Catholics who prefer a more traditional liturgy are eagerly anticipating the change.
But after getting a glimpse of the texts in recent months, thousands of priests in the United States, Ireland and Australia have publicly objected that the translation is awkward, archaic and inaccessible. Although most are resigned to adopting the new missal, some have mounted campaigns to prevent it from being introduced.
“What we are asking of the bishops is to scrap this text,” said the Rev. Sean McDonagh, a leader of an Irish group, the Association of Catholic Priests, which represents 450 priests — about 1 out of 10 — in that country. “I know people are not going to use it. I wouldn’t use it, because everything I know in terms of theology and anthropology and linguistics, it breaches every one of those.”
American Catholics will first encounter the new missal on Nov. 27, the first Sunday of Advent, the start of the liturgical year and the season leading up to Christmas. Even bishops and church officials in charge of preparing the way for the new language in the Mass acknowledge that it will take some adjustment — especially for priests, who will have to master complicated new speaking parts.
One of the most noticeable changes is in the Nicene Creed, the statement of faith that Catholics learn to recite as children. Currently, Catholics say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father,” but in the future they will say that Jesus is “consubstantial with the Father.” This is one of several changes that include unfamiliar vocabulary.
In the current Mass, when the priest says, “The Lord be with you,” the congregation responds, “And also with you.” Come November, the congregation will respond, “And with your spirit.”
Church leaders say that this new choice of words is not only less casual, as befits a greeting to a priest, but is also consistent with the language used in the Catholic Mass in French, Spanish, Italian and German. A universal church, they say, should have the closest thing possible to a universal missal.
The new missal is the product of a long tug-of-war over liturgy, which began with the decision of the Second Vatican Council to make the Mass more accessible to Catholics by allowing churches to replace the Latin with the local vernacular. Bishops in the English-speaking world set up the International Commission on English in the Liturgy to share the monumental task of translation. By 1973, they had produced a new missal, but many experts in liturgy agreed that it was hastily done and required revision.
The commission continued its work, and produced texts that did not always adhere tightly to the Latin, but instead aspired to what it called a “dynamic equivalent.” The commission also strived to use language that it considered more gender neutral.
Those efforts were upended in 2001, when the Vatican issued “Liturgiam authenticam” (Authentic Liturgy), an instruction requiring that translations of the Mass adhere literally to the Latin vocabulary, syntax, punctuation and even capitalization. And the Vatican appointed a committee it called “Vox Clara” (Clear Voice) to advise the translation efforts, but it gradually took on a more supervisory role.
More recently, the association of priests in Ireland and a much smaller group of priests in Australia also called on their bishops to hold off on introducing the missal. The missal has already had a test run in South Africa, where the bishops said they mistook the instructions and introduced it a year too early.
Sources include

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Maryknoll priest faces laicization for women's ordination support (Post #122)

Excerpt from National Catholic Reporter: Maryknoll priest faces laicization for women's ordination support

Apr. 08, 2011

With four days to go (April 12, 2011)  before likely dismissal from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and laicization by the Vatican, Fr. Roy Bourgeois has officially told his order he will not recant his support of women’s ordination.  Bourgeois announced his stand outside the Vatican's Apostolic Nunciature in Washington during a Friday vigil attended by over a hundred of his supporters. He read aloud from a letter he sent that morning to Maryknoll superior general Fr. Edward Dougherty.
The longtime peace activist and founder of SOA Watch received a letter March 29 from Dougherty warning him of his dismissal. That letter gave him 15 days to "publicly recant" his support of women's ordination before a second warning will be sent, followed by the forwarding of the case to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith "with a request for laicization."

In his formal letter of reply to his order Bourgeois says he cannot comply with Dougherty’s request for him to recant “without betraying my conscience.”   “In essence, you are telling me to lie and say I do not believe that God calls both men and women to the priesthood,” Bourgeois writes in the letter. “This I cannot do, therefore I will not recant.”  Before reading from the letter at Friday's vigil, Bourgeois participated in a prayer service led by members of Roman Catholic Womepriests and received a blessing from those in attendance, with supporters placing their hands on his head and body, said Erin Saiz Hanna, who attended the event.

At the end of the vigil, which was attended by people from as far away as San Francisco, Hanna said Bourgeois attempted to give copies of the petition and his letter to the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers to a representative at the nunciature.  Although he was prevented from doing so by Secret Service agents who said they could not open the door to the building, Hanna said the event was “very moving.”

In the letter to his superiors, Bourgeois cites five reasons why he thinks the exclusion of women from the priesthood “defies both faith and reason and cannot stand up to scrutiny.” Among them are a 1976 report by the Pontifical Biblical Commission -- which, he says, concluded there was “no valid case” against the ordination of women in scripture -- and the fact that he believes the call to be a priest comes only from God.  “I believe our Creator who is the Source of life and called forth the sun and stars is certainly capable of calling women to be priests,” he writes.

The 1976 report, which was published in Catholic News Service’s Origins documentary service, concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence in the New Testament to “settle in a clear way and once and for all…the possible accession of women to the presbyterate.”  When asked how he views his decision to continue his support for women’s ordination in light of his vow as a priest to support church teaching and obey his superiors, Bourgeois said that he felt that his “first allegiance was to God.”  “I’ve always felt that when you see an injustice, really it’s your conscience and faith in God calling you to address the issue and to break your silence. And when your superior tells you to be obedient, then you have to make a decision: Do I follow God or man? And there was no question I must go with my faith in God.”

Bourgeois also raised that issue of the primacy of conscience in his letter, citing a 1968 commentary by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the Vatican II document on the church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes. “Over the pope ... there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary, even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority,” Bourgeois quotes from the future pope’s words.

As the days tick by until his likely laicization, Bourgeois said he hopes his situation might act as an example for others who are facing similar struggles with their conscience.  “The issue resolves around conscience, and really living out in our lives -- all of us, all of us, my family, you, I, all of us -- with what we believe. In our lives, in our journey of faith, we are going to come across situations like this -- in our church, in our communities, in our families -- and we have to make decisions rooted in our faith and our belief in a loving a just God,” said Bourgeois.

“And the decisions that we are going to make will not be easy. It’s going to upset others -- our family, our friends. What’s important is to, in a loving way, follow our conscience, not get angry and simply embrace the consequences, the cross. This is what Jesus taught: embracing the cross.”

Sources include
http://ncronline.org/news/bourgeois-tells-maryknoll-i-cannot-lie-i-cannot-recant
http://www.maryknollsociety.org/index.php/about-us
http://ncrnews.org/documents/bourgeois_canonical_warning1.pdf
http://www.soaw.org/
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_pro_14071997_en.html
http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/

PLEASE PRAY FOR FR. ROY BOURGEOIS