Debate on Celibacy ; Conspiracy of Silence Film

A major debate about the Catholic Church and compulsory priestly celibacy will take place in Central London tonight (14 September), ahead of the Pope's visit to the UK.
Clerics, academics, a stand-up comedian and well-known public figures are among those taking part.

Film-writer and director John Deery is staging a discussion on the contentious and topical issue, following a screening of his feature film, Conspiracy of Silence, inspired by true stories from Catholic priests in the UK, Ireland and Italy. For more information about this film click here and there is also a discussion forum on this website


You can watch the film online
( up to10 screenings for £4.97).

The motion for the debate is that “Celibacy should no longer be a compulsory requirement for the Roman Catholic priesthood.”
Deery has strong views of his own on the issue: “In the past, if a priest broke his vow of celibacy by abusing a child all attempts were made to cover it up and he was allowed to stay. However, if he marries – even now – he has to leave the priesthood. The twisted logic of such decisions leaves many Catholics thinking what sort of church do we belong to?”

Another speaker for the motion, Professor Tina Beattie, a leading Catholic theologian, writer and broadcaster from Roehampton University. comments: “When celibacy is imposed rather than freely chosen, the struggle to conform to what may seem like an almost impossible demand creates a clerical culture which is obsessed with sex.”

“The Catholic Church is dysfunctional in terms of its understanding of human sexuality. It speaks out far too often on questions of sexuality and not nearly often enough on other questions of social justice,” says Professor Beattie.
Fr John McGowan, a Carmelite priest, and human rights lawyer and Helena Kennedy QC are also backing change.

Opposing reform are Bishop Malcolm McMahon, Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham, stand-up comedian and broadcaster Frank Skinner, Jack Valero, Communications Director of Opus Dei UK and Coordinator of Catholic Voices, and Fr Stephen Wang, Dean of Studies at Allen Hall Seminary.

Chaired by Ernie Rea, broadcaster and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Belief programme, the debate will take place at the Odeon West End Cinema, 40 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7LP.

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Hot topics in Religion Update

With a fortnight to go before Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the UK the media information is hotting up with a feeding frenzied menu of varied relevant items to suit all tastes and provoke interest and debate.

Here are a few that caught my eye this week :

 
Nine Catholic bishops have recorded personal stories about their relationship with God to help people understand the theme of the Papal Visit. The link is here or from here and each video is about three minutes duration. (But you may need to register first to access these.)

Then there is this post on Women and the Priesthood from  Fr. Stephen Wang , a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Westminster, England and currently Dean of Studies at Allen Hall seminary in London, where he teaches philosophy and systematic theology .

In direct opposition to Fr Wang's views we have this post  from Professor Tina Beattie of The Roehampton University, UK who lectures in Theology & Religion and  Human Rights and Former President of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain. 

The Guardian newspaper gave space to comments from The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols who has distanced himself from an aide who said gay rights and the commercialisation of sex had turned Britain into a "selfish, hedonistic wasteland" and "the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death".

The comments from Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs at the diocese of Westminster and an adviser to the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, have angered gay rights and secularists groups and provoked embarrassment among the Catholic hierarchy weeks before the Pope visits Britain. The article can be read here.

Then physicist Stephen Hawking has stated that the universe was not created by God. The article is here but his findings were described by the UK Chief Rabbi, Oliver Sacks as an "elementary fallacy" of logic.

Writing in the Times, the Chief Rabbi said: "There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn't interested in how the universe came into being." 

The Guardian Editorial Comments from here kindly rebut Professor Hawking's findings with a lovely quote in praise of God using this old limerick:

There was a young man who said, God 

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he finds that this tree 

Continues to be 

When there's no one about in the Quad.

The quad in question is in Balliol College Oxford and the metaphysics those of 18^th century idealist philosopher Bishop Berkeley. 


The clever riposte is by the doyen of Balliol clergy, the 20^th century Roman Catholic theologian and Bible translator Ronald Knox.

 Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd: 

I am always about in the Quad.

And that's why the tree 

Will continue to be,

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, GOD.

 

All these tie in nicely with the scripture readings for Thursday  ( see my previous post  here on these) and I am left with these words ringing in my ears from the first reading: 

"Let no one deceive himself.
If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age,
let him become a fool, so as to become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God............."
 

Women priests, Bishops and Delicta Graviora ( No- Not a new type of gravy)

Image via Wikipedia

The Church of England has decided to ordain women Bishops sixteen years after giving the go ahead to the ordination of women priests despite there being a risk of schism. 

You can read more on this from the BBC here and an article plus comment section from Sally Barnes writing in The UK Guardian  here and another by Emma John ( also from the Guardian) from here

Meanwhile The Vatican considers even the mere thought of women priests being ordained so heinous a crime that when it releases new rules that govern matters of sexual abuse by clergy they are expected to include the ordination of women under the delicta graviora, the same category of grave sin that governs sexual abuse by priests. 

 Multiple news agencies have also reported that, in addition to sex abuse crimes, the  updates to Canon law documents will include the attempted ordination of women as a "grave canonical crime.”

In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree declaring that anyone who attempts to ordain a woman -- and the woman seeking to be ordained -- incur automatic excommunication. The provisions of the 2007 decree are expected to be included in the new instruction.

Read this article in Religion Dispatches by Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual  in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Roman Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to liberation issues.

For those unfamiliar with the issues at stake this is a good site



Further recommended reading here  and here

In a society in which we are discouraged from discussing and resolving  the truly outrageous things that are going on in the world, it’s perhaps inevitable that people will contrive to be offended by the triviality of which sex should be priests and bishops.

Yet it saddens and sickens me to the pit of my stomach that I am living in such times when my church equates women's ordination as a serious crime on the same plane as sexual abuse by priests .

There will be a day, I believe and pray, when such matters are resolved and women will have full ministry of the ordained priesthood in the Catholic Church.


This site also gives both sides of the theological arguments for AND  against  women priests

A Job To Believe In : Bishop Not Convinced

The bishop responsible for evangelisation in England and Wales has questioned the Pope’s decision to create a New Evangelisation council.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton, in an interview with BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme, appeared to say that the Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, which focuses on re-evangelising Europe, is superfluous.

He also said he was not convinced by the notion that secularisation lies at the heart of the Church’s decline in Europe.

Image source

 

He said: “I think the Church has a problem in its own proclamation of the Gospel and you wonder why you’d set up this office for evangelisation anyway, because the whole mission of the Church is evangelisation, the proclamation of the Gospel. I don’t think we’re doing that terribly well.”

Bishop Conry said that the Church had become “simply irrelevant” for many people.

He said: “My own personal opinion — I would stress that this is a personal opinion — is that I am not entirely convinced by this secularisation argument. It suggests that the Church’s problems are external, in other words society has gone wrong, but the Church is fine.”

The Church, he said, had “failed to put across its own message in a way that’s accessible enough”, because many people in Britain felt “spiritual”, but not “faithful”, and did not “have a belief in a personal God”.

Bishop Conry said: “It’s authoritative. It’s intolerant. It’s demanding. It’s exclusive. I think the Church has got to re-present itself rather than simply blame everything on the ills of society.”

He said he thought it needed “to become a little more tolerant, accessible, welcoming, compassionate. All the things that, for many people, it is not.”

When he was asked whether the new curial department had been created because of a fear that Islam might overtake Christianity as Europe’s religion, Bishop Conry said: “That’s interesting. When I met the Pope recently – I met the Pope in January – I was talking about the state of the nation, as it were, and I mentioned in this part of the country there were growing numbers of Muslims wanting to get into Catholic schools, for instance, and his only question was: ‘Is there fundamentalism?’

“And I said, ‘No, no. Muslims want the same as us: they want schools. They want housing. They want jobs.’ I don’t know what concern there is there. There may be, but I suspect it’s simply the fact that numbers in the west appear to be declining quite radically, meaning numbers of Catholics, that is, in church on a Sunday.”

H/T to Clerical Whispers

Discussions : The Future Direction of the Catholic Church

This article by Catholic Peter Steinfels from today's Commonweal is worth a read.

Steinfels ( left) is the co-director of the Fordham Center for Religion and Culture and in his book called In A People Adrift, he warned that the Catholic church in the U.S. and Europe faced "thoroughgoing transformation or irreversible decline." 

Yes,  he says "the gates of hell will not prevail but that did not guarantee the church's flourishing or even existence in any given time or place."

Even as early as 2003, Steinfels, in an interview for PBS outlined some of his fears for the church he loves. 

He fears that unless American Catholics overcome what he calls a "vacuum of leadership," they will experience "a soft slide" into Catholicism in name only, as has happened in much of Europe. The danger is a kind of hollowing out of the faith of Catholics, where it no longer will affect the central decisions that they make."

For the video and/or transcript of this interview see here as well as other resources and an  extract from his book, A People Adrift. 

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Ross Douthat (left),  raised the question even more bluntly: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/21010/07/the-catholic-church-is-finished/8159.

Peter Steinfels says :

“For millions in Europe and America,” he writes, Catholicism is “finished” — “permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.”  Perhaps the sexual scandal is not the chief culprit, but church leadership’s  inability to respond adequately is certainly a symptom of something deep seated.  More and more I contemplate the possibility that Douthat may be right.  What do others think?"

Well, 135 others have made comments to Steinfels article so far in a wide ranging debate which indicates at least  that people are not indifferent to the topic and heartens me as a fellow Catholic.

Douhat's earlier article in April of this year, " The Better Pope " in the NYT was a well balanced and unbiased report  so he is definitely not a Pope Basher  nor seeking to get on the controversial bandwagon for the sake of it.

You can read this one here  and another from E. Kain in the American Times here who supports the integrity of Douhat's journalism.

Fourth Sunday of Easter :The Good Shepherd and Me the Sheep

All the readings for this Sunday's Mass are here.

This Sunday is traditionally “Good Shepherd Sunday,” and is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

So many questions stem from these readings.


What’s the connection between the “Lamb of God” and the “Good Shepherd”? 

When (and why) do we feel like a sheep? 
When (and why) do we feel like a shepherd? 
The good shepherd in the Middle East goes in front of the sheep and they follow because they trust him.
No force, no fierce dogs nipping at their heels; only a well-known voice urging them on to the safety of the fold.

This is a good homily that deals with the over-sentimentalised image of God's people being seen as just passive sheep.

Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of the favourite images in art through the centuries.

Christ was often depicted as a shepherd in Christian art of the 3rd century. There are over 100 Good Shepherd images in the underground Christian burial grounds of ancient Rome and in Chinese art Christ the shepherd features too.

This is a great link with fantastic visual imagery of Christ the Good Shepherd

So often we behave like silly sheep, but we have a shepherd we can trust, who will pick us up when we fall and carry us home. 

What does the word “vocation” mean to us? How does it refer to our present situation, right here and now?

What does it mean for our future? 

What does the ministry of priests mean to us?

What is the role of vowed religious women and men in the Church?

What about the vocation of marriage or the single life in the Church?

 Some Key phrases from today's readings below...

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. . . .

All who were destined for eternal life came to believe, and the word of the Lord continued to spread through the whole region.

I, John, had a vision of a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue. 
. . . The Lamb who is in the centre of throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

 



This image of Pope Pius XII may be far from the image some of us have of the way the hierarchical church has shepherded us recently.

Yet it is Christ's endless desire for every one of us to come home to our community and not to be lost in the dark. 

There are not many of us who can truly understand the love of Christ, and those who often say they do are far from the truth, because the love of Christ often makes no human sense to us.













Think about it. "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy" Luke 15:4-5 

No one in their right mind would leave ninety-nine sheep for one. That Shepherd would be unemployed the next week. 

But in the eyes of Christ, no one in their right mind would not leave the ninety-nine.
 
It's out of perfect love Christ comes after us. This is the kind of love of someone  willing to sacrifice His life for us. 

All for a bunch of sinners. I wish I could say I understand this kind of love, but if I did I'd be lying. 

And yes, despite all my education and knowledge in this 21st Century, that's why I can still call myself a sheep, and I have come to realise that at the end of the day, I don't have to understand it.

I have a shepherd I can trust, who will pick me up when I fall and carry me home. 
Alleluia!

Bishop Jim Moriarty resigns as Bishop of Kildare and UK Church apologises

Click here to read the letter of resignation

and click here for BBC News on Catholic Bishops of England and Wales apology over sexual abuse and statement by Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols.

Young People's Questions For Pope

Googling God Blog ( try saying that fast!) has a post combined to a link with readers comments from the USA National Catholic Register on the Pope's visit to Malta.

It is worth a look because it features provocative questions given to the Pope from four young people struggling with their faith but also pointing out the need for the church to listen.

I leave it for you to decide whether the Pope's response was adequate.

The Last Supper

I have been thinking about the chalice or Holy Grail used by Jesus at the Last Supper.

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the hero stands before rows of goblets and in a life-or-death moment must decide which one is the Holy Grail—the wine cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper.

Ignoring richly adorned chalices, Indiana Jones carefully lifts a plain vessel and says, 

"That’s the cup of a carpenter."

 ( Image left : Click on Image for larger version) 

I read this somewhere a long time ago:

Once, the Catholic Church had only wooden chalices but "golden " priests.

Now we have golden chalices and wooden priests !

(That is a tad unfair as I know there are many "golden priests" but it can seem like that sometimes.)

So to be more charitable let's  pray for priests !!

This is a link to one of the "golden ones", Fr. Austin at  Concord Pastor which has a Prayer for All Priests.

Also today at Whispers in the Loggia there are a couple of interesting posts :  a scoop video interview with Cardinal William Levada, the onetime Inquisition's current chief.

In a second post today, Rocco Palmer, the author of Whispers in the Loggia states:

"It wouldn't be sensationalistic nor unfair to expect something significant from the Pope at the one annual liturgy dedicated to the priesthood, this Priestly Year's theoretical climax: the Chrism Mass of Holy Thursday morning -- the day's one liturgy held in St Peter's, and the only Papal Mass at which all priests present concelebrate.

Has a pope ever resigned ? See this short video to find out........

Read more on link below about

What sort of chalice would Jesus have used at The Last Supper?

Word on Fire Video Documentary Series Preview

Word on Fire, a not-for-profit global Catholic media organization headed by Fr. Robert Barron, has teamed with Picture Show to produce and direct a ten part documentary series on the history of Catholicism.

The series will explore, through a global journey, the living culture of the Catholic faith: from the lands of the Bible, to the great shrines of Europe, to the shores and heartland of America, to the mysteries of Asia, to the rich landscapes of Latin America, to the beating heart of Africa and beyond.

Available some time late in 2010. Click here for their website where you can find out more.
UPDATE.
This trailer starts off by talking about "the sexual abuse crisis" in the American Catholic Church as if this is the only country that has the problem. We now know that it is spread over many other countries.

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Pope Benedict's Visit to UK

Details of Pope Benedict's visit to the UK have been finalised and will involve visits to Scotland and The Midlands.

No doubt the British fashionistas will want to see if  the pope will be wearing his  Nike hat, designer Serengeti sunglasses, Cartier watch and those fetching trademark red leather slippers/loafers for the occasion.

Benedict XVI will celebrate two public masses, meet the Queen and move a 19th century theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman closer to sainthood in a ceremony at Coventry airport.

Non-policing costs amount to £15m, a sum to be met by the state and the Catholic churches of England, Scotland and Wales.
The pope's 4 day trip starting on 16th September will  take in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Coventry and London.

He will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor John Paul II, who visited the country on a pastoral trip in 1982, by celebrating mass in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.

And what about Gorgeous George Ganswein (Papal private secretary with the film star looks ??). Thou shalt not drool.

Will there be time for a game of tennis do ya think ?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4218136.ece
Now about those shoes........the devil,wears Prada but not the Pope

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