CATHOLIC WATCHDOG GROUP CALLS ON U.S. CARDINALS TO AFFIRM CHURCH TEACHING WHILE IN ROME

An international group of faithful Roman Catholics has contacted Vatican prelates and all active U.S. cardinals and asked them to publicly affirm the Church's 1961 pronouncement against admitting homosexuals or pedophiles to the priesthood.

Stephen G. Brady, the president of Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc. (RCF) issued a statement on Wednesday that was directed to 8 active U.S. cardinals as well as a number of additional American and Vatican prelates. The American cardinals include Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, Francis George of Chicago, Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., William Keeler of Baltimore, Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, Edward Egan of New York City, Adam Maida of Detroit, and the currently embattled Bernard Law of Boston. They will be traveling to Rome next week with National Conference of Catholic Bishops president Bishop Wilton Gregory and others at the summons of the Holy Father. They will be participating in closed-door meetings with Vatican representatives to address the scandal and damage the Church in America is undergoing due to an increasing number of sexual abuse cases coming to light. A number of prelates have been accused of protecting abusive priests and moving them to other areas, where they have repeated their predatory acts with new victims. An overwhelming number of offenses have involved homosexual acts.

"As a measure of their sincerity in addressing this horrible crisis inflicting so much damage on the souls of the innocent," Brady charged, "we challenge each and every one of these princes of the Church to sign a statement agreeing they will follow the direction of a letter issued by the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome." Brady is asking each prelate to affirm the following declaration: "I, ________ Cardinal ________, hereby agree to follow the direction of the letter issued by the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome in 1961, which states: 'Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination'". The Church directive has never been rescinded and is still officially in force.

"If a cardinal is not willing to sign this document," Brady stated, "then there is no point in his traveling to Rome. Moreover, if he travels to Rome and doesn't sign it, I wish he'd do us a favor and just stay there."

Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc. (RCF) is a not-for-profit lay organization, with many religious members, dedicated to promoting orthodox Catholic teaching and fighting heterodoxy and corruption within the Catholic hierarchy.

ROMAN CATHOLIC FAITHFUL, INC.
P.O. Box 109
Petersburg, IL 62675
Phone 217-632-5920
Fax 217-632-7054
Web www.rcf.org

My son's church has a wonderful Opus Dei priest. There are children everywhere, and they have Perpetual Adoration of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

I'm told I'm old fashioned because I believe the answer for every troubled heart and our troubled Church can be found in spending our time with attentive minds and heartfelt devotion while adoring Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

I pray that JPII will remind the Cardinals of their responsibilities that were laid out so clearly at the Council of Trent, Session XXIII. From Chapter XVIII concerning the Method of establishing Seminaries for Clerics, and of educating the same therein.

Trent ??? Trent ???

First, if you ever ran into a Catholic today who knows that there even was a Council of Trent (the Vatican II amnesiacs), they's say 'oh, but the Council repealed all that.'

ARTHUR
Each evening from December to December
Before you drift to sleep upon your cot
Think back on all the tales that you remember
Of Camelot

Ask every person if he's heard the story
And tell it strong and clear if he has not
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot

CHORUS
Camelot, Camelot
I know it gives a person pause
But in Camelot, Camelot
Those were the legal laws

ARTHUR
Where once it never rained till after sundown
By 8 AM the morning fog had flown
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief, shining moment

CHORUS
That was known as Camelot

lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Unfortunately, a number of professors at other Catholic institutions have refused to do this. Richard McBrien of Notre Dame even refused to seek a mandatum from his bishop to teach "Catholic theology." Anyone who has an emotionally visceral or strong hostility toward Catholic teaching, Catholic culture, or the Church in general should never be given authority in a Catholic classroom, lecture hall, chairmanship of a department, or a university president's office. Moreover, there are actually anti-Catholic non-Catholic faculty at some "Catholic" institutions of higher learning.

The problem is that the mandatum as implimented by the AmChurch doesn't have any teeth. The NCCB has dragged their feet on Ex Corde Ecclesiae for over ten years and come up with what amounts to mere symbolism. McBrien and his ilk will suffer no consequences for thumbing their noses at the Pope and the US Bishops.

We need to bring back a version of the anti-Modernist Oath, IMO; to those who don't take it, don't let the door hit your a$$ on the way out!

"For the most part parents in families have failed to hand down our sacred traditions. They brag about using artificial means of birth control. Look around you in your churches. How many families have more than three or more children? Very few. How many do you see involved in invalid marriages are marching up to receive communion? Look at the way the laity dress when they come to Mass. The signs are there for people who come to Sunday Eucharist to come modestly attired and still they come in haltars, tanktops and short shorts.----They have ignored the teaching of the Church proclaimed by many good priests throughout this nation. How many families gather with their children for an evening meal and then say the Rosary together every night. Most of our children don't even know the Rosary and many of the parents don't either."

This is all true, every word but it isn't just the parents...many states have usurped parental authority in education to the degree that the current generation never knew it was theirs to begin with and I can see in my own parish how the DRE does the same. I had to go to the Director of Religious Education in my Archdiocese just to get our parental rights to teach the faith to our children in our home as part of their Catholic Homeschool curricula. And then the DRE wouldn't let me use my choice of books even though they were approved by the NCCB...so I told her my daughter(turned 9 last month) was using the CCC(and she is.) Unfortunately the crisis in the Church is tied into the education machinery too.

"The NCCB has dragged their feet..."

The NCCB is part of the whole problem. This bureaucratic BS, playing to TV cameras, the swarming cabals of liberal dissenting clerics, pressure groups, and lib journalists who follow the NCCB buffet events - all of this nonsense has very little to do with the spiritual/sacramental mission of the Church. You end up with a lot of bureaucratic double-speak jargon, loaded with hyphenated, conditionally qualified, hypothetical gobbledygook - which really means nothing in the final analysis. Ridiculous documents which result in further study of revised, bureaucratic position papers by bureaucratic committee just legitimize the PC dissent. And then you have "further study" of "further study" and more "prayerful reflection" on "prayerful reflection" ad infinitum. All this to wiggle around NOT saying directly and emphatically that homosexual behavior is wrong and that there is no place for it among the clergy, that liberal heretical dissent is wrong and that there is no place for it in the faculty dining rooms or lecture halls of Catholic institutions. Overblown, hypothetical, and casuitical, jargon-laden parsing of Ex corde leads nowhere. Does anyone really need one hundred footnotes to figure out that "Catholic" colleges should be "Catholic" and run by "Catholics" (and not by socialist or homosexual activists)? You don't have to be a canon lawyer or an expert in canonical ecclesiastical Latin legalisms to figure out that Richard McBrien types have jumped off the ship or that Fr. Shanley types should be thrown off.

Unfortunately, it seems possible that the meeting in Rome will tend to stay strictly limited to the legal matter of how to deal only with clergy accused of sex abuse in terms of a national policy for reporting that to legal authorities when the problem with homosexuality and corruption is much wider. The mess surrounding Ex corde ecclesiae is related to the current problems because the whole idea that "dissent" from church teachings (including on homosexuality) is an acceptable posture is given support by the organized dissent in higher education. Unfortunately, the Ex corde debate has generally limited discussion to "theology" (as defined canonically) when the problem in higher education is much broader than just that. The liberal effort to apply pressure on the Church to tailor its institutions (at all levels) in conformity with PC trends, as a sort of carbon copy of secular liberalism, is very much a part of this. The bishops really need to uphold Catholic orthodoxy throughout the Church's institutions and not just when clerics molest minors. Had they done that in the past, one wonders whether the current scandals would be nearly as large and disastrous.

A few links tracing this path:

Ex corde ecclesiae editorial: America

Bureaucratic Process for Ex corde ecclesiae by Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities

First Things article on Ex corde

The ex corde debate really shows the 'unofficial schism'. We need new leadership here that follows the Magisterial teachings but given how slowly things happen in the church it probably won't happen until my kids have grey hair. The really sad thing to me is the present need for more good Priests and the waffling the current crisis will have in terms of deterring religious vocations. We will need a miracle.

You are probably right that this will all take time. There are actually quite a number of good Catholics active both as priests and as lay educators who are providing a good foundation for the next century. We do need to see bishops addressing certain things more confidently and forcefully. The PC dissenters really need to move along. If they don't want to uphold and support the Catholic faith, there are faithful Catholics who can replace them. The traditional and historic centers of Catholic learning in the U.S. need to be reclaimed by our leaders. Bishops should be actively speaking out against dissent wherever it rears its ugly head. No one has a right to squat on church property and force everyone else to listen to their anti-Catholic, PC whining.

The NCCB is part of the whole problem. This bureaucratic BS, playing to TV cameras, the swarming cabals of liberal dissenting clerics, pressure groups, and lib journalists who follow the NCCB buffet events - all of this nonsense has very little to do with the spiritual/sacramental mission of the Church. You end up with a lot of bureaucratic double-speak jargon, loaded with hyphenated, conditionally qualified, hypothetical gobbledygook - which really means nothing in the final analysis. Ridiculous documents which result in further study of revised, bureaucratic position papers by bureaucratic committee just legitimize the PC dissent. And then you have "further study" of "further study" and more "prayerful reflection" on "prayerful reflection" ad infinitum. All this to wiggle around NOT saying directly and emphatically that homosexual behavior is wrong and that there is no place for it among the clergy, that liberal heretical dissent is wrong and that there is no place for it in the faculty dining rooms or lecture halls of Catholic institutions. Overblown, hypothetical, and casuitical, jargon-laden parsing of Ex corde leads nowhere. Does anyone really need one hundred footnotes to figure out that "Catholic" colleges should be "Catholic" and run by "Catholics" (and not by socialist or homosexual activists)? You don't have to be a canon lawyer or an expert in canonical ecclesiastical Latin legalisms to figure out that Richard McBrien types have jumped off the ship or that Fr. Shanley types should be thrown off.

I agree completely.

What's amazing is that this bureaucratic parsing by committee and "further study" of further study by committee is exactly what is likely to happen after the Rome meeting with the U.S. cardinals. Odds are that Nightline will have on Richard McBrien, and Alan Keyes will drag Monsignor McSweeney on as commentators for their commentary on the commentary. Greta van Sustren (of all people) actually had two wild-eyed nuns in street clothes on last night. Do we really need all of these people parsing footnotes to figure out that homosexuals don't belong in the priesthood? No, obviously.

Of the three shows you mention, I figure Msgr. McSweeney is the least dangerous to the faith. Alan Keyes knows what's up and can cut through the Mons' PoMo PC BS. Did you see Keyes' show the other night when Bill Donohue made his heterodox co-guest admit that he doesn't agree with Church teaching on homosexuality? Classic and very illustrative stuff.

I have seen BILL Donohue on recently. He does a MUCH better job than, say, PHIL Donohue. Bill was also on Chris Matthews' Hardball.

I don't know why some people don't like Bill Donohue. I dig him. He is a no nonsense guy and may come off a little strong but that is what we need.

I suppose he may come across a little brash sometimes. He can get emotionally intense and visibly excited which might strike some people the wrong way, but obviously he is sincere in his entirely valid concerns about both anti-Catholic bigotry and misrepresentations of Catholicism by liberals. The Catholic League site does maintain a fascinating inventory of assaults on the faith.

Catholic League: here

I send my kids to a non-denominational Christian school along with many other Catholic parents because many Catholic schools don't support the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly with regards to NFP and sex education as a whole. In addition, Scripture is not a major part of a Catholic's education anymore. I think that is very, very sad.

Fortunately, we belong to a good parish that has a great religious education program that incorporates Scripture into the teaching of the Catholic faith in a seemless and age-appropriate way. To me, my kids are getting the best of both worlds: a solid Catholic education through CCD, weekly Mass, and prayer at home AND a general Christian education with a thorough use of the Scriptures as well as a firm ABSTINENCE ONLY sex education program. (My kids aren't old enough for sex education -- second and kindergarden, but if they went to public school they would probably know about sex and condoms already.)

Anyway, my point is that there are problems all around, but they are not everywhere. There are some excellent Catholic schools and universities that are faithful to the doctrine; there are many families who strongly support their children in their faith. Some parents don't, and that is sad.

We need to work to better catechize the laity, through love and charity and honesty. And most important, holding fast to the CCC, which is firmly based in Scripture.

God bless.

Good for them. In the Episcopal Church they had the now-famous “Righter Trial” a few years ago, and the right of a Bishop to ordain non-celibate homosexuals was affirmed. The higher-ups who run the national church organization are of the opinion that anyone who is uncomfortable with the fact of open homosexuality in the ordained ministry is homophobic, reactionary, and unloving. A lot of Episcopal clergy feel that having openly homosexual men in the ordained ministry does not raise the statistical chances that teenage boys who might happen to be around such priests in church settings will be preyed upon sexually. Activist groups in the laity are in agreement. Laity who do not agree with this generally keep their mouths shut out of fear of being called intolerant. Or, they leave the church.

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