Mutiny in the Big Apple - New York Archdiocese

Whispers in the Loggia ^ | J+M+J 13 Oct A.D. 2006 | Rocco Palmo

[Maeve]

Mutiny in the Big Apple *EXCLUSIVE -- MUST CREDIT WHISPERS*

In 1983, the new bishop of Scranton was consulted on the appointment of a new archbishop of New York.

John O'Connor was familiar with the See given his long service as a Navy chaplain, culminating with his four years as auxiliary bishop to the Military Vicar, Cardinal Terence Cooke. O'Connor later made it known that, while the new archbishop would inevitably face some difficulties, he opined that none would be due to the New York presbyterate, who served well, loved the church and were loyal to their archbishop.

Less than seven months after his installation in Scranton, Bishop O'Connor was promoted to the Big Apple. He may only be gone six years, but how times change.

Long-simmering tensions among a broad cross-section of the archdiocese's priests broke into the open today with the circulation of an anonymous letter under the authorship of a group calling itself "A Committee of Concerned Clergy for the Archdiocese of New York." Saying that, "At no time has the relationship between the Ordinary and the priests of the Archdiocese been so fractured and seemingly hopeless as it is now," the authors have urged their confreres to lodge "a formal vote of 'NO Confidence'" (emphases original) in Cardinal Edward M. Egan, who became archbishop in 2000. Using strong language throughout the 950-word missive, the authors allege a widespread finding that Egan's relationship with his priests has been "defined by dishonesty, deception, disinterest and disregard."

The cardinal turns 75 on 2 April, when he must submit his letter of resignation to Pope Benedict XVI.

In its entirety, the letter and accompanying ballot are published below for the first time outside of the New York presbyterate. As he recovers from a September knee-replacement, the cardinal's intense displeasure at the move has already become known.

Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the archdiocese, declined comment on the document.

***************************************

October 2006

Dear Brother Priest:

A Committee of Concerned Clergy for the Archdiocese of New York has met to discuss the critical condition of the Archdiocese of New York. As you would understand, because of the severely vindictive nature of Cardinal Egan,this committee must remain anonymous. This letter is being sent to many priests throughout the Archdiocese so that at each Vicariate meeting a formal vote of “NO Confidence” can be exercised with regard to Cardinal Edward Egan in his role as Archbishop of New York. As you know, the collective memory of the presbyterate cannot recall a time in recent history when the morale of priests has been so broken and low. Some of our elderly priests can well recall the Cardinal Spellman years. Many remember the tenure of Cardinal Cooke and certainly everyone remembers Cardinal O’Connor. At no time has the relationship between the Ordinary and the priests of the Archdiocese been so fractured and seemingly hopeless as it is now.

Since his arrival in New York, the Cardinal has given his time, attention and interest to matters financial while paying little or no attention to the spiritual needs and concerns of the priests and faithful of the Archdiocese. During the last six years the Priests of the Archdiocese of New York have been patient, understanding, tolerant and loyal. Several attempts have been made to open avenues of communication with the Cardinal but to avail. During the last six years, the Cardinal’s relations with the Priests of New York have been defined by dishonesty, deception, disinterest and disregard. Far too many of our brothers can speak personally of the arrogant and cavalier manner in which they have been treated by the Cardinal. Early in his tenure, the cruel and ruthless way in which several priests who served on the seminary faculty were dismissed, was an adumbration of how many other priests would also be treated. Time and again, the Cardinal fails to be the Father that every bishop must be to his priests.

With regard to important policies and decisions that impact upon the welfare of the Archdiocese, it is evident that the Cardinal does not seek advice or counsel from the many competent and experienced priests who so faithfully serve as pastors and members of his chancery staff. Instead, it is regrettably and seemingly apparent that the Cardinal relies on the advice of his priest-secretary [Msgr Gregory Mustaciuolo] who enjoys a most limited and meager pastoral experience.

The Fifth Anniversary of September 11th was a sad reminder of the Cardinal’s decision to leave New York only two days after the attack, during a time when the city desperately needed a spiritual leader. How sad, painful and disappointing it was to hear the tabloids referring to the then Mayor Giuliani as the “Shepherd of the City”. Since that time, the Cardinal has continued to fail in his role as Shepherd. Pope John Paul II referred to New York as the Capital of the World. How unfortunate it is that the voice of the Archbishop of New York is almost never heard in that “Capital”. The Cardinal demonstrates an unnatural fear of the media and he forfeits the great opportunity to employ the media as a means of addressing the many contemporary questions of faith and morals. It is unthinkable that in this millennium a Successor to the Apostles would shrink from such a valuable opportunity for evangelization and hide himself within the walls of his residence.

Sadly, it is evident that this Cardinal is unable to deal with the complexities, problems and challenges of an Archdiocese of the magnitude and diversity of New York. For these reasons and more, the Priests of the Archdiocese of New York must express a vote of NO CONFIDENCE. Such a vote would encourage the Papal Nuncio and the Holy Father to strongly consider accepting the Cardinal’s resignation in April,2007, when he reaches the age of retirement, rather than at a future and uncertain date before his 80th birthday, as can often be the case with retiring Cardinals. The search for a new Archbishop should begin sooner rather than later. Rome must know that the priests and people of New York desperately need a Bishop who will be “strong, loving and wise” (II Timothy: 1:7): a Bishop who will love his priests, seeing them as his spiritual sons and faithful assistants: a Bishop who will begin the healing that is so desperately needed in this Archdiocese: a Bishop who will preach and teach without fear of seeing his name in a newspaper: a Bishop who will truly see holiness in Truth.

The Committee suggests that at each vicariate meeting a secret ballot be taken in which each priest who is present could vote. It was thought that only priests and no deacons should participate in this vote. The votes should be counted at that meeting and the tally registered on the enclosed form. The form should be signed by two witnesses and a copy sent to each of the Vicars General. It would be incumbent upon the Vicars General to report the vote to the Papal Nuncio. At this important and critical moment, let us move forward with prayerful courage.

After prayeful consideration, I cast my vote as:

NO CONFIDENCE in Cardinal Egan: _____

CONFIDENCE in Cardinal Egan:_____

ABSTENTION: ______

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Each Vicariate should send a copy of this form to each of the Vicars General-

Vicariate: ____________________________

Date of Meeting:________________________

Number of Priests in attendance: ____________

Number voting - NO CONFIDENCE: __________

Number voting – CONFIDENCE: _____________

Number voting – ABSTENTION: _____________

These vote was taken and counted in the presence of all those in attendance at the Vicariate meeting. Witnessed by:

___________________ __________________

[Carolina]

Has anyone met some of the Anglican priest converts to the RC Church?

I only know of a couple whom I knew back in my High Church Anglican days. But they're both very holy men. Do you know how many Anglican priest converts there are by any chance?

[BlackElk]

Since SSPX was founded by miscreant and now long dead and excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to spit in the face of John Paul II and to destroy papal supremacy, schism is sure to follow wherever SSPX goes. Illicit bishops Fellay and Mallerais and Williamson and whoever else is an SSPX bishop pretend that they are merely waiting for Pope Benedict XVI to surrender the Church itself to its SSPX enemies. SSPX is hardly in a position to "retrain Novus Ordo priests in .... orthodoxy" since SSPX is a schism and its leaders were justly excommunicated by John Paul II.

I understand that you have had a bad time in the northwest under the likes of former Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen but that does NOT justify cuddling up to the little band of vicious SSPX schismatics who are no better than Hunthausen in their opposition to papal authority, miserable excuses for Catholics (to the point where Ecclesia Dei and their excommunications and the declaration of their schism was necessitated by their rebellious attitude, violation of priestly vows as to their priests and unauthorized bishops and general anti-Catholic behavior).

As to learning the Tridentine liturgy, this is not nuclear physics. In the Hartford Archdiocese, the priests are trained by an absolutely Catholic layman who is Master of Ceremonies at Sacred Heart Church in New Haven. In Oakland and Rockford and probably many other dioceses, priests have been easily trained without the intervention of the Church's SSPX enemies. Centuries of Catholic altar boys learned with relative ease their part of the Tridentine Mass from their parish priests. Priests are educated adults. Those willing to learn and say the Tridentine Mass will have no difficulty. Actually Catholic orders like the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (founded by SSPX priests who finally figured out that they should return to the Roman Catholic Church if they wanted to be, ummmm, Roman Catholics) can train the diocesan priests. In any event, we do not want our priests trained in ANYTHING by those whose ideas and resultant behavior have caused them to be justly declared schismatic and excommunicated.

No one died and left the SSPX in charge of disciplining the Church or the pope or the papacy. Rather the contrary. Make a timeless example of them and their punishment.

IF the Vatican should ever allow these creatures to crawl back into the Church, may their illicit bishops be permanently silenced and cloistered and their priests as well unless and until they fully confess and renounce their ecclesiastical crimes. Likewise any who rebel from the liturgical or ecclesiastical left.

I prefer the Tridentine and would very much like to see it become again the normative Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Novus Ordo should be tolerated until it dies on its own (as it surely will) and with the proviso that abuses not be allowed. Restore the high altars and altar rails and tabernacles. Severely punish ANY priest who for ANY reason violates orthodoxy or vows or liturgy. Restore order. Save the most severe and humiliating punishments for the illicit bishops and ringleaders clerical and lay.

Did you mean that Rome is ready to "help" SSPX to train our priests? How generous of those excommunicated to be willing to accept Rome's "help!"

The battle has always been joined. John Paul II was given to us as was Benedict XVI and John Paul I and several hundred others---each and every one of them, just by virtue of election, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. You did not mean that John Paul II was not a "truly Holy Father" simply because of his excommunication of the Lefebvrite miscreant schismatics, right???? His are the shoes of the Fisherman in which Benedict XVI now walks. No revisionist history!

The Lavender Mafia are often quite in love with the smells and bells and classical music and high art of the traditional Roman Catholic Church. It is obedience to the Church's leaders and standards that escapes them and, in that, they are quite similar to SSPX and such. There is or was an Anglican "High Mass" at Christ Church on Broadway in New Haven, Connecticut, in the heart of the Yale area, which was sooooooo traditional that visiting Catholic trads attended and participated without realizing that it was a Protestant (High Anglican) Church. In New Haven, we locals also knew that it was tres lavender as well.

Of course, the Lavender Mafia needs to be investigated and punished as vigorously as the SSPX needs to be. Rome doesn't have to choose between them. Rome can deal with all of them with enthusiasm and vigor and due severity.

You are being delusional as to the Anglicans as well. The Vicki Gene types and wing will get no benefit from the influx of rebellious liberals willing to trade Catholic truth for apostasy and trendiness. Most of the worldwide Anglican community is in a state of suffering utter disgust in response to the Vicki Gene types. This is particularly true of the Anglicans in Africa. Look for them to come to Rome as have many of the Anglo-American conservatives in Anglicanism already.

As to Edward Cardinal Egan, he is a failed experiment. Rome should pick up his resignation instantly on April 2, 2007, as an obvious message and appoint a superb successor (with a bullwhip and a smile and the temperament to use both) on April 3, 2007, lest the NY archdiocesan priests imagine that it is for them to decide who Egan's successor should be.

[wideawake]

Egan is criticized for several reasons:

(1) He is definitely more of an administrator and financial manager than a charismatic pastor. This is good and bad.

(2) He is criticized by not doing enough about the molestation scandal, which is demonstrably true. His Brooklyn suffragan was one of the most egregious coddlers of these types and he failed to put him in check.

(3) He has displayed a complete indifference to the Latin Mass community - not overt hostility, but complete indifference.

(4) Priests criticize him because they feel that he only contacts them over financial matters, insisting that they get their ducks in a row. A lot of this is personal resentment on the part of priests as well - the ones who have not done a good job of running their parishes, and there are many, are unhappy.

So there are reasons to criticize Egan and reasons to acknowledge that he has served well.

[TaxachusettsMan]

I've met about a dozen (at a conference), and I must say that, while their doctrinal orthodoxy and devotion to the non-negotiable role of the Papacy (and to the person of the Holy Father, John Paul II at the time) were impressive and even inspiring, I was somewhat surprised at the great attention - over-attention, I thought - to cassocks, shoulder-capes, birettas, surplices with lace trimmings and neck-ribbons, and a general pre-occupation with fussy detail that was not just good ritual concern but downright effeminate (mannerisms and joking, too - catty criticisms of others, giggling over liturgical practices of the Novus Ordo), etc. etc.

Very off-putting.

[ELS]

Let's not forget that Egan eliminated/banned/whatever exorcists from operating in the NY Archdiocese.

[Jaded]

Can we fill out our own "Confidence" votes for other Bishops/Archbishops? I'll start the list:

Mahoney
Hubbard
Flynn
Brown

[Jaded]

Wait... these are all NO CONFIDENCE votes.

[Jaded]

That's wonderful of you. I feel like a heel

[Talking_Mouse]

4) Priests criticize him because they feel that he only contacts them over financial matters, insisting that they get their ducks in a row. A lot of this is personal resentment on the part of priests as well - the ones who have not done a good job of running their parishes, and there are many, are unhappy.

When I lived in Orange County, NY, Father discussed this perception of the Cardinal with the congregation. It was about two years ago. He, Father, had just met the Cardinal at breakfast to discuss the Archbishop's Appeal. He said that the Cardinal was caring and took interest in his priests, however he was not a warm fuzzy person.

The Cardinal had remembered Father's name and parish from meeting him at a golf game over two years before the breakfast. Father was impressed with him, and found very little that the "angry priests" said was true. It must also be stressed that the parish was (and still is) a tithing parish (sermons on tithing, people coming in and talking about it, notes in the bulletin), we no longer had any debt, and we always were over our goals on the Archbishops Appeal. This kind of financial management may be one of the reasons why the Cardinal was warm to Father.

[Rutles4Ever]

Saint Ignatius is turning over in his grave:

From his Letter to the Ephesians -

4. Hence it is fitting for you to set yourselves in harmony with the mind of the bishop, as indeed you do. For your noble presbytery, worthy of God, is attuned to the bishop, even as the strings to a lyre. And thus by means of your accord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung. Form yourselves one and all into a choir,[8] that blending in concord and taking the keynote of God, you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, that he may hear you and recognize you through your good deeds to be members of His Son. Therefore it is profitable for you to live in blameless unity, that you may always enjoy communion with God....

Obviously this is not a divinely inspired text, however, the esteem due St. Ignatius should give us pause when there is open group rebellion against a bishop by the clergy.

If the bishop is financially minded, then he's financially minded. Whereas there may be legitimate concerns that his spiritual shepherding leaves something to be desired, as in any unit that demands cohesion (e.g., military), creating or deepening a fracture by further scandalizing the diocese with a no-confidence vote seems to be a bad idea for everyone.

[Rutles4Ever]

Thanks. He's on my Rosary bishops list (for conversion before it's too late).

Cardinal Egan needs a conversion? How do you know? Because he has poor social skills? Maybe he's doing God's will in concentrating his work on protecting the archdiocese from financial ruin. I don't know what the specific concerns are of these priests. Maybe they're legitimate, maybe they're not. A no-confidence vote is mutiny. Even in the case of someone as hopeless as Cardinal Mahoney, the office of archbishop still commands due respect...

[nanetteclaret]

My list is up to 27 - guess it will be 28 with the addition of Brown.

Here's my list so far. I picked up these names, just in reading different threads, so I hope none are on which shouldn't be. My own Bishop is included because I know the state of our Diocese first hand! In no particular order:

Abp. Jadot
Clark
Hubbard
DuMaine
Ferrerio
Flores
Gerety
Imesch
Sylstad
Favalora
McCarrick
Maida
Myers
Trautmann
Kelly
Law
Pilarczyk
Untener
Sullivan
Weakland
Mahony
Lynch
Loverde
Keller
Grahmann
Egan
Flynn
Brown

Here is a great Novena. I got it from an EWTN mailing and prayed it before the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. It is really fitting. Maybe if we all prayed this Novena every day when we say our Rosary...

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, in these times of such brazen impiety, show your power with the signs of your former victories. Look with mercy on the Church of your Son, on His Vicar on earth, and on all the clergy and laity, who are sorely oppressed in this mighty conflict.

Powerful vanquisher of all heresies, hasten the hour of mercy even though the hour of God’s Justice is every day provoked by the countless sins of men.

As I kneel before you in prayer, obtain for me my requests (mention your intentions). Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.

As an aside, I was looking through a picture book of our Diocese the other day, and I have to say that I believe North Texas takes the prize for the number of ugly churches per square mile. There are a huge number that were built in the 50's and 60's that look like they were built out of cinder blocks with low metal roofs. Many were built in the suburbs and I guess the original churches were destroyed. My own church was founded in 1892 under a different name. I don't know if it burned or was torn down. In its place, in a different section of town, is a hideous 1950's church that looks just like a Seventh Day Adventist church I went to one time for a funeral. Father tries hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but it's still a sow's ear. Whatever Bishop approved these cheap, shabby edifices had no concept of the "Glory of God" or just didn't care! (IMHO)

[nanetteclaret]

See post 7. Any Bishop that does this cannot be said to care for his flock.

I'm sure if he doesn't need converting, Jesus will ignore my prayer.

[Talking_Mouse]

As an aside, I was looking through a picture book of our Diocese the other day, and I have to say that I believe North Texas takes the prize for the number of ugly churches per square mile. There are a huge number that were built in the 50's and 60's that look like they were built out of cinder blocks with low metal roofs. Many were built in the suburbs and I guess the original churches were destroyed.

I remember joking with my friends in the early '80s about the new "pizza hut church". The building was shaped like a pizza hut (square, high roof with a little square on top, slightly overhanging eves, etc). Inside it was a startling blue and orange, had movable chairs not pews and a fountain feeding a pool for the holy water (which to us under 25 year olds was the coolest thing about the church). The sign out front saying it was a church was the only reason we knew it was a church -- there was no cross on the building, no statues outside.

We referred to it as Our Lady of the Extra Peperoni and I will forever think of that building whenever someone says 'ugly church".

[Aquinasfan]

Unfortunately, the letter lacks specifics.

Well, he's a Cardinal Archbishop of New York, and I cannot think of single good thing to say about him. He forced the Armenian Catholics out of their Cathedral (St. Ann's) so he could sell it and make money off of the land. That's for starters...

Your info helps.

Didn't he also try to bust Fr. Pavone down to parish priest on Long Island?

[Rutles4Ever]

Is this what he did? Or is this what someone claims he did? I'm glad to know that hearsay is all it takes to declare a bishop in danger of perishing in hellfire.

[Unam Sanctam]

I'm no huge fan of Cardinal Egan, but this letter is a bit unseemly in my view. A priest does owe obedience and respect to his bishop, and if Cardinal Egan is reaching the retirement age, the problem might resolve itself in time.

[Maeve]

Has anyone met some of the Anglican priest converts to the RC Church?????????? Lavender indeed - even some of the "married" ones.

I actually know about a dozen of them. They are very wonderful priests.

What in the world is your major malfunction?

[Maeve]

Yes. He tried to squash Priests for Life. In the end, Fr. Pavone moved to the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas (with the remarkable Bishop Yanta).