Posted on 05/16/2006 3:44:36 AM PDT by prisoner6
(KDKA) PITTSBURGH Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Bishop Donald W. Wuerl to succeed Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick as archbishop of Washington D.C.
Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States, made the announcement Tuesday morning.
Pope Benedict accepted the retirement of Cardinal McCarrick who had served in Washington since his appointment on Nov. 21, 2000.
Archbishop-designate Wuerl will continue to serve as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh until his installation as archbishop of Washington on June 22.
"The decision of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to transfer me to the Archdiocese of Washington," Archbishop-designate Wuerl said, "is one I embrace in the context of faith in Gods providential care. Although I am greatly aware of my own limitations, I find strength in the Pope’s trust in me and also in the prayerful support I have always found from the Catholic faithful I have attempted to serve here in the Diocese of Pittsburgh."
Cardinal McCarrick described Archbishop-designate Wuerl as a "wonderful friend to me over so many years and I have watched with delight and deep respect — and sometimes with more than a little envy — the great things that the Church of Pittsburgh has accomplished under his leadership. I truly cannot think of a better choice for Washington than Bishop Wuerl."
Archbishop-designate Wuerl has been bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh for 18 years and will celebrate the 40th anniversary of his ordination as a priest later this year.
As a devotee of the Latin liturgy, I applaud the choice of a cleric whom freely allows the practice. We are fortunate in St. Louis to have one of similar mind in Archbishop Burke. Congratulations D.C. and may Pittsburgh be blessed in his successor.
Kinsley knows squat about economics.
2 posted on 05/14/2006 12:29:03 AM EDT by Petronski
ROFL
****
Just about as much “squat” as you know about a great older hitter hitting a baseball for distance. What you may think you know about that is the meaning of “squat” .
The next time you want to ping me to a thread about Barry Bonds..... please DON’T.
Better for you to stick to meandering on the grace and quality of the Catholic Church or the price of decent cigars for an upcoming bachelor party.
Btw, Hines Ward and Dee Thompson tell me, “great luck to you with your marriage.”
You will be blessed!
Petronski, you are still close to God.
I vehemently agree.
"All they had to do is get out the word, they chose to stay quiet both Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II, They chose poorly!"
"Get out the word?" Without the specifics, what good would that do? It would just be a libel on priests in general. The people with the specifics were the bishops. More than half of them shielded abusers and discreetly paid off victims, instead of bringing criminal charges against known offenders. That was the really sickening part.
Pope John Paul II came out of the era when the bishops of Poland, individually and as national conference, showed themselves fully competent to resist the Communists. I think he expected strong bishops as a matter of course. He almost "couldn't believe it" when bishops were cowardly, devious, and negligent.
Entrusting the enforcement to the bishops, and giving them almost unlimited time and leeway to "do the right thing," was a major ongoing weakness in John Paul's otherwise brilliant pontificate. But that doesn't deprive him or his successor of the right to be called "Holy Father" --- and Holy Father Benedict is in the process of naming replacements for bishops.
That's why I say "We shall see." And that's why I say, "Pray for him."
Thanks, Mr. Sheed!
More interesting news from Saturday, Mrs. Tax:
http://churchofthemasses.blogspot.com/2006/05/poor-ron-howard.html
Very colorful. I expected to hear questions from my Sunday School class about this yesterday (it's a Sunday School class on Monday :-), but didn't get any. I guess they're too young for the book (11 years old) ... hopefully none of the parents will take them to see the movie this weekend!
My own kids have been asking questions because of the articles in our diocesan newspaper.
Was it St. John Eudes who said a bad pastor is a chastisement? I guess all the more so when we get predators in the priesthood? In this country it's common to cry to the rooftops our victimhood, but the Catholic position is not this. That's an American impulse.
Have you ever read the Peterson report done at the request of the USCCB, specifically "cardinal Law" outlining the crimes that were being perpetrated by the criminal priests.
A great many of these priests were being"Treated" at the expense of the faithful and without their knowledge.
The Bishops promptly attacked the messenger, Fr. T. Doyle and kept the report secret.This was 1985 and everything was layed out as to how the Church was to respond to this crisis, These malformed Hierarchal cretins refused to deal with reality and chose to leave the victims swinging in the wind.
"The people with the specifics were the bishops. More than half of them shielded abusers and discreetly paid off victims, instead of bringing criminal charges against known offenders."
You can bet the Pope and Ratzinger plus half of all the priests in the U.S.A. had knowledge of the actions of the Barbarian Priests and chose to do nothing.
They were not leaders and don't deserve to be addressed as "Holy" even if only in a titular sense.
It appears as in all crimes the victims are too often forgotten, and the cowards rewarded.
Another good reference was "Lead us not into Temptation" bu Jason Berry, and his most recent Book "Vows of Silence"
which implicates the vatican up to the Pope, JPII.
There was and is plenty of specifics, read Fr. Cozzens,"the Changing Face of the Priesthood and Michael Rose "GoodBye Good Men.
"The Changing Face of the Priesthood could not be more timely as we enter the new millennium in ... Father Cozzens is highly qualified to write this book." ...
GOODBYE, GOOD MEN
How Liberals Brought Corruption
Into the Catholic Church
by Michael S. Rose
Cover story: What they knew in 1985... Fr. Michael Peterson, Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle and Ray Mouton, are likely to haunt ... “I told Bernie, ‘This is our report,’ ” Doyle told Lombardi. ...
Best you post what you want and I'll post what I want. As I requested privately, kindly leave me alone.
Kudos to Bishop Wuerl. The coverage on our local Pittsburgh TV and radio stations all day has been Bishop Wuerl updates. This is BIG NEWS in da Burgh, with 800,000 Catholics -- but also, Bishop Wuerl was a respected moral leader in the community at large. He has the respect of those of other religious heritages as well.
Some people tend to assume that the Vatican has a huge investigative unit, a huge enforcement unit, and a fast-action posse to boot, which are supposed to maintain doctrine, discipline, and virtue in every Catholic venue everywhere. This is just not the case.
Each bishop has the responsibility to govern his own diocese. If he's not doing it with all due diligence, and his fellow bishops are not only not giving a stiff dose of "fraternal correction" but are actually covering up for him, what is some Italian/German speaking guy sitting in a little room 10,000 km away with his four phone lines and two fax machines supposed to do about it?
The Pope may be (within the limits of the definition) infallible, and the head of the CDF a very intelligent guy, but it is ludicrous to expect them to be omnipotent and omniscient as well.
No matter what they "knew" --- and they must have heard a great deal which they had no means to verify ---their options were very limited. That's why, as a matter of realism let alone justice, the onus has to fall on the bishops.
As for the bishops who were protectors/enablers of abusive priests? I'd like to see them in prison. It's a shame that "stocks" have fallen out of fashion: that, at least, would force them to face the sensus fidelium.
And as for the title "holy"? As always, it pertains to the office, not the man.
My opinions are partly formed by reading books by men who have researched the issues thoroughly and two or three of them are priests.
I have been reading about this Horror since Jason Berry wrote his first book on the subject.
In Boston alone "card" Law was in charge of about 267 priests who were involved with sexual abuse, and what did JPII do ,He promoted this Criminal Homosexual Enabler to a high post in the Vatican with a $ 12,000.00 per month allowance.
If that is not enough for you it certainly is for me.
We know of 3 or 4 treatment centers set up to cure Pedophile priests and tens of thousands of dollars were spent on each criminal priest before putting them back in the ministry, Give me a break!
according to published reports more than 2/3rds of the Bishops were involved in shifting priests to different parishes after credible allegations of abuse.
One only needs to listen to or read the depositions taken from Law or Egan to know these guys were guilty.
Dear chatham,
"The Bishops promptly attacked the messenger, Fr. T. Doyle and kept the report secret.This was 1985..."
You are aware, of course, that the actual cases of abuse peaked in 1984, and began a downward slope to pre-1960s levels by the early 1990s. In other words, although the bishops and the Church didn't bring all these cases into the public, the actual numbers of children being abused fell dramatically over the course of about ten years, pre-dating the lamestream media "exposés" of these cases by nearly a decade.
Whether one believes that the Church adequately did all that should have been done, it is wrong to say that the Church did nothing. In fact, the Church actually DID make many changes in many dioceses, and reduced the incidence of abuse by 90% LONG BEFORE the scandals broke.
Many believe that the Church should have handed over the miscreants to the civil authorities for criminal prosecution. Many believe that the Church should not have made payments to victims and families to pay for psychotherapy of the victims. Many believe that all the offender priests should have been publicly outed, immediately laicized, etc.
Fine. I think each of those points can be debated.
What can't be debated, however, is that most dioceses did address the problem in a way that actually reduced the incidence of abuse by roughly 90%.
To say that the pope and the bishops weren't listening or acting is calumny.
I've pinged dangus because he did a quick statistical analysis of the Jay report, and can likely give more precise numbers, and the trend lines through the decades.
sitetest
I disagree with his stance, which may have arisen from being misled by Cdl. McCarrick, but he did use the opportunity to clarify some valuable Catholic teaching:
"And when a third asked why the church doesn't apply the same scrutiny to politicians who support the death penalty, Wuerl noted that the 2002 doctrinal note that clarified the Vatican's position on abortion does not call capital punishment intrinsically evil. The church opposes capital punishment, but mainly because the nation has the ability to incarcerate criminals rather than execute them.
"Still, Wuerl noted there were many areas where people fail to live up to church teachings, and that "it's the church's job to hold up those issues" for scrutiny, but the right to life is the primary issue facing the church today.
""There's nothing more basic than life itself," said Wuerl. "That's the reason for the intensity in this debate.""
Petronski, I never wish (or wished) to be disagreeable about anything with you, you have always seemed to be one of the best and reasonable here.
On Bonds and baseball, let me just say this to you. In that movie about the female baseball team (A League Of Their Own), Tom Hanks famously delivered that great line, "There's no crying in baseball."
LOL .......... that was the greatest.
But......... forever and ever - decade in and decade out, in baseball there HAS ALWAYS BEEN cheating. Cheating in so many variant ways, from stealing signs from the center field bleachers ..... to pine tarred and corked bats, to sand paper and Vaseline and scuffed balls, and 1000 other ways of cheating has been a main element of baseball.
Bonds most likely cheated, but as a baseball player myself, I do not think the "drugs" were the main element in his increased power #'s. I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.
Anyhow, I'd like to forget that unpleasantness with you if you would also.
What younz say?
1. Benedict XVI nor Wuehrl had anything to do with the selection of Skylstadt.
2. As for JP2 or Benedict's alleged complicity with the sex abuse, please see this post: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1358826/posts
To wit, "After 1980, the number of abuse cases dropped in nearly half in the next six short years. And in half again in the next five. And in half again in the next three. In fact, by 1994, the year the media was catching on to the story, the number of abuse cases had been cut by 90 percent."
Oh, Benedict knew alright. As long ago as 1987, PJ2 was speaking out against it, in public, to his bishops. But he was DOING something about it, not creating circus sideshows like the MSM.
OTOH, Sitetest, CUA's seminary is famous for being a "Pink Palace." At least at Emmitsburgh the raunch is heterosexual. (And not actually usually involving the seminarians themselves.
4) Good sources within the diocese tell me that he is a celibate homosexual.
Now that's not very nice...
12) He appears to me very personally fastidious and neat, he is always impeccably dressed and groomed. He is personally kind and easy to approach and talk to. He is very media-savvy and telegenic.
O my Goodness, he IS gay!
(just kidding)
(I probably shouldn't say this too indiscretely, but I met McCarrick, and got a gay vibe from him.)
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