Posted on 08/23/2005 9:26:33 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
WASHINGTON, August 23, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic News Service has announced that Rome is set to start its long-awaited "apostolic visitation," or systematic investigation and evaluation of the formation offered to prospective priests in seminaries. With many bishops studiously ignoring what has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of the elephant in the drawing room, Rome may be planning to force the issue at last.
The last Vatican-led visitation was seven years in duration beginning in 1981. The report given to Pope John Paul II, according to some observers, amounted to a whitewash in which the theological and moral dissent being taught was deliberately ignored or hidden.
This time, after years of mounting sexual abuse scandals in which certain bishops were implicated in a massive cover-up, and after some dioceses have declared bankruptcy and closed parishes to pay off settlements, Catholics may be hopeful that the real issues will at last be addressed. The Vatican has named Edwin F. O'Brien Archbishop for the Military Services as the coordinator for the project.
O'Brien's may be a familiar name to pro-life Catholics, especially those in the military, for his letter of 2000 that forcefully upheld the Church's teaching that the right to life has primacy over other social concerns. Writing on the priorities for Catholic voters, he said, "One subject stands out as preeminent --foundational to every other. And that is the sacred dignity of human life and the right to life itself !" (emphasis in the original).
"Nowhere," wrote O'Brien, "is the disregard for human life more heinous than in abortion and the increasing acceptance of euthanasia… abortion and euthanasia strike at the foundation of every other human right."
"Laws that promote the right to kill innocent human life are unjust, not to be obeyed and, surely, not to be promoted by any elected official who holds human life sacred," he wrote.
Rome has also specified that the visitation will be carried out in the light of John Paul's 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor which highlighted the necessity of adherence to the fullness of Catholic moral teaching.
Faithful Catholics in the US have said for years that the sex abuse scandals have been caused or seriously exacerbated by the laxity in formation of priests in seminaries which, in the 1960's adopted a more secularist and psychological approach to moral formation.
The problem of accepting homosexuals into the priesthood has become so common that it is now widely and openly considered a "gay profession." The USCCB's own report on the sex abuse crisis showed that since 1950 over 80% of victims of clerical sexual abuse were male.
Archbishop O'Brien also supported the war in Iraq.
Will his pro-life position be nicknamed Eggs Benedict?
This is clearly 30 years overdue, if not more. I talked with the dean of the Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio (the only seminary owned by the Vatican). They graduated Cardinal Law(less).
I asked the dean about the doctrine of the seminary. He said with some pride, "The faculty may argue the ordination of women in the lunchroom, but they teach according to Rome in the classroom." When he saw that I responded to his hypocrisy, he changed the subject.
I was there to get a library card. I read more of the traditional Catholic books than most of the seminary, judging from the check-out cards.
Let's hope it's not a white-wash. Kick @ss and take names. It's way past time to drive a steak through the heart of the lavendar mafia.
laxity in formation of priests in seminaries which, in the 1960's adopted a more secularist and psychological approach to moral formation.
And that just doesn't work.
Everyone would be better served with faithful priests and theologians. Unfortunately, all the denominations do much of the same thing - protecting false teachers and degenerate ministers.
Good news -- my impression is that he's a solid guy.
Before Vatican II, was there any Catholic bishop, anywhere in the world, who was not "strongly pro life"? And who did not recite the penitential psalms whenever he strayed from the Faith?
Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.
Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum: dele iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et peccatum meum contra me est semper.
Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis et vincas cum judicaris...
"Good news -- my impression is that he's a solid guy."
Mine, too. I only got to meet him once, but there was no creepy vibe at all about him.
Sadly, there were probably a great many of them. If you look at the horrors that have befallen the Church since the Vatican Council, you can't help but think that much of the rot must have been in place well before that time--and that the supposedly solidly Catholic faithful must not have been all that solid. Just look at what has happened in the theoretically Catholic province of Quebec, for example. We have a shift from ultra-Catholic to pure pagan in just a few years. It could not have happened if the Church had been properly led and our faith properly instilled in the youth.
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