Any normal human being could not easily get over with those images of mangled lives. I haven’t. I cried while listening to Jessica Soho’s official Network statement on the tragedy, asking every viewer of the choices at hand: peace or violence. Part of the tears was grieving with the grieving; a segment of those, for the enactment of human being’s capacity for demonic control, a reversal of how Godly we are capable of. Thank God for tears: when human suffering becomes absolutely absurd and enigmatic, tears seem to hold the bewilderment and the tension, alluring the human psyche and soul into some deeper cry for justice and strength only the tearful God on the cross could catch. It feels this way in the silence of a prayer: “God, what’s going on in this Christian country? Why, after 2 thousand years of ongoing Self-disclosure, must the violence of the crucifixion continue?”

I am learning it is more potent to honestly listen to the questions in daily silence. It is more long-term a political solution than some quick, defensive, rational answers that turn chatterers like Lorelei Fajardo and the Ampatuans basely comical and detestable. In the honesty that Silence demands, it is safe to go naked without high-powered guns, paid goons and prestige, social influence, mansions, or fat bank accounts. Silence’s simplest and steepest demand is to cultivate total dependence on Someone, and not on something or someone.

So here i am, at the threshold of one of the loveliest seasons i often savor so religiously – Advent. I revel in the progression of the lighting from one candle to the community of 4 before Christmas. The Advent wreath reminds me so much of the hedge of God’s protection within this period or other times of waiting: it is safe to wait at bus lines, in malls and markets, for some commodities prayed for to arrive because God’s hedge of protection is always around me. Nothing is outside of God, not even death or evil deeds.

Aha! But here i am also, dragging those images of evil into Advent’s beginning. I contend the question is rather not “Why” but “Why not”. Hear this from Luke today:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”

How hair-raising a colossal of turbulence and restructuring of the cosmos! Beyond what we can imagine, and obviously, beyond what the Ampatuan powers in our midst can control. Coming in a cloud with power and great glory is the Son of Man, again, not the Ampatuans of our times.

The Gospel of Luke was written after the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish civilization, in 70AD. The destruction utterly torn apart the Jewish identity, shattering whatever peace and hopes they had for a new world order. It was a deep, searing wound on the Jewish psyche that Christian writers like Luke had picked up and turned this into a “2012″ narrative in the context of the second coming of Christ (not a new generation of Ampatuans).

So i enter Advent with scary images of the Last Days and the massacre in Maguindanao. The Maguindanao destruction was no less searing and painful than the destruction of the Temple: it cuts deep into our democratic identity and national psyche; it mirrors the violence of the First Century; it showcases the daily Satanic subtleties of warlordism and self-centeredness only to erupt at an uncontrollable time. The Jews must have shed tears and the early Christians must have hoped high. So do i and many others. Still, i will light my first candle of hope and waiting for justice and the best of politics.

————–
Photo credit: zik “Tay”

I’m leaving for the vigil mass at St. John the Baptist’s in Dayton in about a half an hour here. The new Church year is officially beginning and we prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ and for the remembrance of his first coming. Not counting today there are 26 shopping prayerful days left until Christmas!

In recent months, the Catholic Church has produced a sulfuric trifecta of moral corruptness leaving a taste in one’s mouth that, in the most euphemistic of terms, can be described wholly unpalatable.

First, there were the verbal fisticuffs between Rep Patrick Kennedy and Lord Voldemort Bishop Tobin, which went something like this:

Kennedy: I support safe, medical procedures for everyone, especially with this shiny new Health Care Bill.

Tobin: Listen Fetus-Slayer-Supporter, you’re a terrible excuse for a Catholic. Don’t receive Communion, the most important part of the Catholic Mass. I award you no points, and may God have Mercy on your soul.

Then, Washington, DC’s diocese threatened to discontinue its social service programs if DC legalizes same-sex marriages.

Finally, RI Governor Sauron Don Carcieri vetoed a bill which would have allowed domestic partners, both gay and straight, to plan their partner’s funeral.

Epic spit take! These men who claim to follow the words and teachings of Jesus Christ make Christopher Hitchens look like Simon the Zealot!

Starting tomorrow, I will post my own meditations on the Gospels in which I will try to get at the heart of their meaning, plumb the depths of their relevance in today’s world, and try to give real Christians some reprieve.

Find sample blogs on a gazillion topics at Alpha Inventions

Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440

‘Pray Without Ceasing’

From ancient times the Church has had the custom of celebrating each day the liturgy of the hours. In this way the Church fulfills the Lord’s precept to pray without ceasing, at once offering its praise to God the Father and interceding for the salvation of the world. —Office of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship

I, Fanny McElroy

When I, Fanny McElroy, first discovered The Brother Cadfael Mysteries, by Ellis Peters, I ripped through them like a scairt rabbit about to be et by a hawk, as Sister Alma Rose says her Daddy Pete says, or maybe it’s “a hawk after a scairt rabbit.” Anyway, I read them fast. And then there weren’t any more, because Ellis Peters died, so for the longest time I put off reading the final book, the twentieth, because I didn’t want to say goodbye to Brother Cadfael, a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey during the 12th century, but I found other books to read because I had become fascinated by all things medieval and all things Roman Catholic.

Compline — Coronation of the Virgin

I loved Brother Cadfael’s irreverent way of being genuinely and truly religious, his painstaking cultivation of herbs for healing, his humor and his kindness. And the way he told the time not by the clock but by the Canonical Hours for Prayer — Matins, Lauds, Vespers, Compline, and so forth. Sister Alma Rose has specific times for prayer during the day, and if I am at her house when one of those times comes, we go into her chapel and pray together, and sometimes we pray out loud, sometimes we don’t, and she reads a psalm and we sing a hymn — harmonizing rather nicely, if I do say so — but the thing is, she always seems to know what she’s doing, I mean there aren’t any awkward “what should we do now?” moments. And now I know why.

The Liturgy of the Hours

Book of Hours, Paris, c. 1410

One lazy summer afternoon I was sitting on the steps of Sister Alma Rose’s great green wraparound porch half-listening to Sister Alma Rose talking with Father Dooley and his sister Bernadette, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and who is a willowy, fair-haired, freckled young woman who has, as she says, “quite enough money,” and her occupation is Doer of Good Deeds, and she would have become a nun, she told us, but she wanted to get married and have children, which she hasn’t, yet, but she’s only something like twenty-two, so she spends her time visiting the sick and does what she calls “healing prayer work,” and sometimes she takes in the homeless, temporarily, like mothers with children running from an abusive man, that sort of thing, not scary people or drug addicts.

Versicle: Poem on a Stick?

So I’m sitting there, drowsy with the sun and the hum of a summer afternoon, and I perk up when I hear Bernadette say “Compline,” so I get up from the step and go over to the green wicker table and sit in the one vacant green wicker chair and listen to Bernadette talking about the Liturgy of the Hours, which is also called the Divine Office, I have no idea why, but Catholics have funny names for everything, like antiphon and breviary and versicle, which is not “a poem on a stick,” as I suggested, and everyone laughed, which was very gratifying because when one thinks that one is being very clever, it’s good to know that others think so too.

The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreaux

I think that everyone was surprised by my fascination with such a dry subject as the Divine Office, which I had thought was something from long ago… well, which it is, but it is still practiced, or “celebrated,” as Father Dooley says, and he as a priest is obligated to “celebrate” the Liturgy of the Hours, but it is a joy to him, he says, and Bernadette also “celebrates” the Liturgy of the Hours, and Sister Alma Rose says that her daily prayer times are “based on” the Liturgy of the Hours. “Fanny McElroy,” she says, “y’all have been celebrating it with me for years,” and then she laughs and pours me a glass of Mr. Truman LaFollette’s incomparable lemonade.

Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1410

Sister Alma Rose is not Catholic (she has referred to herself as “a Christian Jewish Buddhist,” probably offending adherents of all three religions, but she doesn’t mind — like J. Krishnamurti, she doesn’t mind much of anything, she says, and she is certainly the most serene person I have ever known, though in a crisis she becomes very exercised and shouts prayers to Heaven).

I am not a Catholic either, but there are many things I like about Catholicism, and here is one of them: For two thousand years or so, in spite of corruption and scandal and competition from other religions, and popes who had mistresses and children, and bishops who plotted royal assassinations, and so forth, the Catholic Church has inspired, comforted, counseled, educated, and healed. Irish monks preserved the knowledge from Roman and Greek antiquity by copying a huge lot of documents by hand (read How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, by Thomas Cahill).

Sister Alma Rose has told me about the vile perverted priests who prey on young boys, but I don’t think that those sick men’s transgressions erase all the good that the church has done. And I love the idea of Confession, and the Rosary, and having one’s own personal saint, and Mary the Mother of Jesus, with her woman’s wisdom and her tender heart, and, of course, the Liturgy of the Hours. And, basically, that Catholic worship has gone on uninterrupted for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Some facts about the Liturgy of the Hours

So I ask a thousand questions, and here is some of what I find out about the Divine Office:

It sprang from Jewish prayer practices (“Seven times a day I praise you,” it says in the Psalms)

It began rather simply, with reading or chanting psalms; reading from the Old Testament, the  Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and epistles; and canticles, which are basically hymns from the Bible but not usually from the psalms.

By the end of the fifth century, the Canonical Hours were — and this is a lot of praying and involves getting up in the middle of the night —

• Matins (during the night), sometimes referred to as Vigils or Nocturns, or in monastic usage the Night Office; it is now called the Office of Readings
• Lauds or Dawn Prayer (at Dawn)
• Prime or Early Morning Prayer (First Hour = 6 a.m.)
• Terce (rhymes with “purse”) or Mid-Morning Prayer (Third Hour = 9 a.m.)
• Sext (rhymes with “next”) or Midday Prayer (Sixth Hour = 12 noon)
• None (rhymes with “John”?) or Mid-Afternoon Prayer (Ninth Hour = 3 p.m.)
• Vespers or Evening Prayer (“at the lighting of the lamps”)
• Compline (KOM-plin) or Night Prayer (before retiring)

Wow! Don’t you love it that the time for Vespers is “at the lighting of the lamps”?

The complete Liturgy of the Hours is contained in the Roman Breviary. Most of the pictures on this page are from personal breviaries made for wealthy people in the Middle Ages.

Très Riches Heures calendar page

All hours begin with Ps. 69-70 v.2, “God come to my assistance, Lord make haste to help me,” and then the doxology:  ”Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.”

The Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer may consist of

• opening versicle (a short verse said or sung by a priest or minister in public worship and followed by a response from the congregation) or (for morning prayer) the invitatory (Psalm 94)
• a hymn, composed by the Church
• two psalms, or parts of psalms with a scriptural canticle. At Morning Prayer, this consists of a psalm of praise, a canticle from the Old Testament, followed by another psalm. At Evening Prayer this consists of two psalms, or one psalm divided into two parts, and a scriptural canticle taken from the New Testament.
• a short passage from scripture
• a responsory (chant or anthem recited after a reading in a church service) typically a verse of scripture, but sometimes liturgical poetry
• a canticle taken from the Gospel of Luke: the Canticle of Zechariah (Benedictus [Blessed be]) for morning prayer, and the Canticle of Mary (Magnificat: The “Song of Mary” from the Gospel of Luke, Magnificat anima mea Dominum = My soul doth magnify the Lord) for evening prayer
  

  Zechariah, Russian Orthodox icon

Nativity from an Antiphon

It looks complicated, doesn’t it? But I have to tell you, it is refreshing and renewing to drop everything at 3 p.m. or whatever because that is the time you have set aside for prayer. And if you’re not Catholic, you can develop your own structure for prayer and praise, as Sister Alma Rose has done, she created a sort of hybrid of the Divine Office, and Father Dooley says that’s fine with him, he encourages everyone to pray in the way that suits them best, as long as there’s no mutilation of poultry and stuff like that.

Well, you can buy the complete Liturgy of the Hours in four volumes for more money than I have in my piggy bank, which last time I counted was $97.13, I am saving for a school trip to walk the Appalachian Trail, but there are less expensive books, such as those that have only the Morning Prayer and the Evening Prayer.

There is much, much more to be told about the subject, but Bernadette had to leave to go back to Grand Rapids and her Good Works, which she does out of love and not to earn points toward Heaven or anything like that. So I will just tell you that I, Fanny, “celebrate” the Hours four times a day using the website DivineOffice.org, which has an audio version with beautiful music, and there are other websites with text versions. Sometimes I pray with Mama, and sometimes with Sister Alma Rose, and sometimes it’s just I, Fanny.

Even if you are not a Christian, you might enjoy this prayer discipline, which is principally made up of psalms anyway, though the references to Jesus Christ Our Savior might make you cringe, I don’t know. What I do know is that I need and enjoy discipline and structure in my prayer life, and for me, Fanny McElroy, the Divine Office is the beginning of that discipline and structure.

Chant; Troparion; hook-and-banner notation

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CNN) — The Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse until the mid-1990s, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation’s 720-page report said that it has “no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up” from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the report.

“The Dublin Archdiocese’s pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets,” the report said.

via Irish Catholic Church covered up child abuse, report says – CNN.com.

Politicians around the country were celebrating today as a moral basis was uncovered for the practice of misleading the people. Senior Fianna Fail sources expressed quiet satisfaction that the catholic church had, in the report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation, outlined the church concept of “mental reservation”, which allows one to knowingly mislead people “without being guilty of lying”. A leading theologian confirmed that Bertie Ahern is now “quite likely” to go to heaven.

Cardinal Desmond Connell explained the concept to the commission as follows:
“Well, the general teaching about mental reservation is that you are not permitted to tell a lie. On the other hand, you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be – permitting that to happen, not willing that it happened, that would be lying . . . So mental reservation is, in a sense, a way of answering without lying. Frankly, it’s been a lifesaver.”

Former philosophy professor, Cardinal Connell boasted about how he duped the media without lying to them about whether diocesan funds had been used to compensate abuse victims. With the air of a magician revealing his secrets, he explained that he had told journalists “that diocesan funds ARE not used for such a purpose; that he had not said that diocesan funds WERE not used for such a purpose. By using the present tense he had not excluded the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such purpose in the past.”

Former director of elections for Fianna Fail , P J Mara, was ebullient. “Once mastered, the technique has endless everyday applications,” he enthused. “For example, the unfaithful spouse could say I AM not sleeping with anyone else rather than I DID not sleep with anyone else. The school bully could say I WOULD never hit Johnny rather than I DID not hit Johnny. And, most usefully, anyone accused of lying can say I AM not lying to you, rather than I DID not lie to you.”

But is this really true? The Poppycock Review contacted the Catholic Church to see if Cardinal Connell had been quoted correctly. We enquired whether he really did condone this ‘mental reservation’ technique of misleading people. We received a short email reply: “Cardinal Connell is not saying anything of the sort.”

(via Pharyngula)

Unsurprisingly:

Hundreds of crimes against children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.

But think of all the poor people the church fed before raping them and beating them up, all right?

‘The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,” it said.

”The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.

”The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.”

The thing is, the CC is just like any hierarchical institution ever. It cares about power and its share in the religious market. A couple, a hundred, or even several thousand abused children are not a problem for a powerful institution, but a couple of people demanding information about its inner workings is, because it potentially undermines its authority. People demanding that a powerful insitution be held accountable are a threat to the institution’s power, too, so the institution will preemptively try to minimalize the danger the easiest way, which is, obviously, to hush everything up.

Cardinal Connell was credited for instigating two secret canon law trials which took place over the 30-year period and led to two priests being defrocked.

THE CC DID ALL IN ITS POWER TO OH WAIT-

The taking out of insurance was proving knowledge of child sex abuse as a major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that archdiocesan officials were still ‘on a learning curve’ at a much later date, or were lacking in an appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse,” it said.

Of course they would know, and of course they wouldn’t react. They were protecting the institution. There were also despicable human beings and cowards, bravely facing very little to no difficulties in their intrepid quest to upheld the status quo.

In other words, fuck you, CC.

From Metro online

Levels of force used by prison officers at Belmarsh high security jail are “extremely high”, a report has revealed.

Nearly one in five prisoners has been involved in a violent incident, an official inspection found.

In one, groups of Muslim and Roman Catholic prisoners attacked each other in the high security unit.

A survey of inmates found they rated gang activity as making the prison “extremely unsafe”.

Around one in five of the inmates at the prison in south east London is a Muslim. Among those held in the high security unit is extremist preacher Abu Hamza.

There are 66 high risk category A prisoners in Belmarsh, including 18 held in a separate top security unit. Since the last inspection, more prisoners claimed they had been victimised or intimidated by staff.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Dame Anne Owers said weaknesses in security had been addressed, to the detriment of prisoner care.

She said: “The overall conclusion of this inspection was that a predominant focus on security, to address some apparent weaknesses, had led to a lack of management attention to some important areas of prisoner care and rehabilitation.

“Those areas now need equally strong and robust management or staff too will see them as less important parts of their role.”

Phil Wheatley, director general of the National Offender Management Service said: “The chief inspector rightly recognises the complexity and challenges inherent in running a prison like Belmarsh which operates as a local prison while also holding Category A prisoners, who must be held under appropriate and proportionate physical security measures to ensure the public is protected.”

Editor’s Comment: In the UK we are seeing hundreds of prisoners embrace Islam every year, some prisons around Leicester have about 5 Shahadah’s a week as prison is an excellent place for Da’wah.

Whilst inside many begin to pray for the 1st time in their lives, but we need to give them the support both inside and outside of prison so they dont fall back into jahil lifestyle choices and continue to pray and practice outside just as they have inside.

The current rage surrounding a Washington, DC pending legislation is revealing how logic based upon wrong headed assumptions can go astray. The DC legislation will mandate the end to discrimination around sexual orientation. As a consequence, any employer who is funded by the District must provide health care coverage to same sex couples. The Catholic Church is outraged.

They claim they fall under this edict because they are contracted by the District to provide a variety of social services. The Church implies that they are innocent by-standers, just pitching in to help the District. Why should they be forced to adopt something they do not believe in?

The Church has said it will not comply and therefore will end its role in distributing these services. It claims it does this social work because of its long devotion to helping the poor (regardless of any particular belief they may hold). But when it comes to homosexuals who naturally make up about 11% of the population, the Church must draw a line. This seems not unlike the line they draw on women (who give or take make up 50% of the population) and eliminate women from any leadership role in the church hierarchy.

The logic behind this is simple. The Pope said so, and the Pope is never wrong. I think this is Way Off Base.

Whenever I look at the institutional Catholic church, as represented by the Vatican establishment and local bishops around he world, at its centralised, totalitarian power structures, its despotic control of speech, and self-selecting methods of appointment and promotion, its wealth, flamboyance and ceremonial, I wonder how the small band of early Christians, so utterly different in culture, ethos and practice, could ever have developed into what we know today as the Roman Catholic church?

“All the believers continued together in close fellowship and shared their belongings with one another. They would sell their property and possessions, and distribute the money among all, according to what each one needed.  Day after day they met as a group in the temple, and they had their meal together in their homes, eating with glad and humble hearts.”

-Acts 2: 44-46

This passage is well known, and clearly refers to a small group of people sharing possessions, as is feasible when a small group share strong beliefs. But what happened later?  How did the sharing of possessions extend to the trickier issue of decision-taking? Later in Acts, we read, in connection with the journey of Paul & Barnabas to Antioch:

“Then the apostles and the elders, together with the whole church, decided to choose some men from the whole church and send them to Antioch with Paul & Barnabas.”

-Acts 15:22

To me, that sounds pretty much like joint decision taking, as well as a simple sharing of possessions.  We have at least a superficial dramatic contrast between the earliest church, and the modern power structure we have today.  This may, of course, have been inevitable.  It is clearly impossible for a church the size that we have today, to literally live together and share all possessions in common (although some religious orders make a determined effort to do just that).  Perhaps a democratic church is also simply no longer possible, given its size.

Still, I don’t like obvious contradictions, and for a long time have wanted to know more about how this one developed.  Reading Eamonn Duffy’s splendid history of the papacy, “Saints and Sinners”, has given me that opportunity. I have now completed a first reading, sufficient to provide at least room for some initial reflection.  More detailed consideration will come after a further, slower reading and more careful analysis.

The first burning question I had was settled within the first few pages.  The official Catholic position is that the papacy was founded by Christ himself, and with an unbroken line following down 2000 years, the Catholic Church has a clear and incontrovertible status as the one true church. Further, since the popes stand in the direct line of succession, they are effectively Christ’s spokesmen on earth, so that the Lord could not allow popes to be in serious error on matters of teaching. (Anybody seriously ready to stand by that second proposition after reading this, or any other history of the papacy, should watch their cheque books.  There could be any number of people ready to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge). The response to the first proposition is easy:  bollocks.

Duffy makes clear, right at the outset, that although the traditional view is that Peter and Paul were the first Popes and martyred in Rome, there is no historical evidence for this.  He does not deny this, just states “not proven”.  Far more damning, is the clear evidence that they could not have been popes, or even bishops of Rome, for the very simple reason that the office simply did not exist.  In the very beginning, Rome was just one of a number of Christian communities spread across many cities of the Mediterranean. In each of these cities, the local churches were independent of each other, each led by their own elders, or “presbyters.” In some of these cities, there began to emerge the office of a “bishop” as leader among the presbyters but Rome was late in starting the practice, and even where they did appear, in some cases there were more than just one bishop to a city.

There was clearly no bishop of Rome until at least after 107 AD, and even by the middle of the 2^nd century, Amicetus, the first of the early “popes” to be known in the historical record, referred to his predecessors as “presbyters”, and not as bishops.

The picture presented by the official Catholic version, of an unbroken line of popes in undisputed authority over the church, is just like so much of Vatican claims:  remarkably economical with the historical truth.

Looking back over the full 2000 year story, the overriding impression that I have is one of a constant struggle over ever-expanding power, a struggle waged between the popes and temporal power over their respective domains, struggles to secure papal office, a gigantic (unresolved) struggle with the Eastern churches for undisputed primacy, struggles with the cardinals and bishops over the limits of papal authority against local jurisdictions, and often struggles with the Vatican staff itself, attempting to preserve their own way of doing things against brief reforming interludes.  Bureaucratic inertia and fiefdoms, it seems, outlive the human spans of single reforming bishops.

To my disappointment, I see very little evidence of the long –term success of reform movements.  There have been many reforming popes:  most notably perhaps a wave of important reformers early in the second millennium, the counter-reformation which attempted (too late) to implement the reforms they could not commit to before Luther made his mark, and most recently the invigorating breath of Vatican II.

Latterly, we have seen the reaction set in, with determined efforts by the curia, and then by John Paul II and Benedict XVI to undo those parts of V2 reforms (but not all) that they disapproved of.   One observation about Benedict’s resistance in particular that has stuck with me, is an observation that Benedict felt the Council showed too much complacency with the world outside, and was not sufficiently rooted in Christology, in particular.  This is an observation that intrigues me: what aspects of Christ’s example and message does Benedict think the church should be emphasising more than it does?  I don’t suppose it is the bit about paying scrupulous attention to the letter of religious law. Christ was well known for His rejection of religious legal literalists, and for placing love and service ahead of religious scruples.  I haven’t yet read of Benedict telling us to give the catechism on sexuality, or canon law, less importance than the primacy of love.

This would be unbearably depressing, were it not for a compensating sense of the modern church that I have, not discussed by Duffy:  that of a theologically more educated, more assertive laity (and religious sisters).  Even as it is seeking to regain and extend the control it had before the Council, the Vatican has to deal with an uncomfortable fact which was not an issue earlier:  in a democratic, educated and electronic age, asserting a claim to control is a lot easier than actually achieving it.  They cannot put the genie of lay participation back in the bottle, they can not put the toothpaste back in the tube.

I hope to bring you more detailed observations, and summaries, of the rise of papal power later.

As Pat Buchanan points out in his recent column, some of us have been waiting for this for a long time. The culture war is really going to heat up now!

I have something to say to the Catholic Church and anyone who espouses its anti-gay, anti-woman teaching.  I want to be very clear about this, so please read carefully

FUCK YOU.

I am so sick of these robed, self-righteous pieces of shit doing everything they can to thwart gay equality and a woman’s right to choose, while they ignore the real moral travesties taking place in their own goddamn Church.  A commission report into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese has found “no doubt”…let me repeat that…”NO DOUBT“…that the archdiocese and other Church authorities have a long, hideous track record of deliberately covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests between 1975 and 2004.

…the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages…Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests.

And, as we all know, this isn’t some isolated freak case in Dublin.  This is a systemic problem within the Catholic Church.  Children have been victimized by predators in robes within the Church, their cases covered up, lives ruined – for what?  For “the avoidance of scandal.”  For “the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution.”

In the meantime, these right-wing freaks within the Catholic Church have conducted a never-ending assault on gay equality here in the United States.  Just earlier this month, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington issued an ultimatum;  the Church will actually shut down its social services for the poor within the District of Columbia if the city legalizes same-sex marriage.  These rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth zealots will actually simultaneously screw every single poor person in D.C. receiving services from the Catholic Church if marriage equality becomes a reality in Washington.  These services include services relating to homelessness, health care, and adoption.

And what about the Catholic Church’s war on women?  The Church played a key role in adding the draconian, anti-woman Stupak Amendment to the House health care bill, which threatens to effectively ban abortion for low- and middle-income women.  If the United States of America returns to the Dark Ages of back-alley abortions, the Catholic Church will be the primary reason.

All of this, while the Catholic Church has a proven record of covering up the sexual abuse of children.  All of this, while Church authorities have disregarded the safety of defenseless children in an effort to save the Church’s “good name.”

A little Scripture may be appropriate:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

The blogger, Kristofer Paul, can be reached at bottomleftpolitics@yahoo.com.

China’s Golden Shield Project has several US corporations such as IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout the country, along with advanced video analysis and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralised database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China – over 1.3 billion people.

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the UK and the US possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cellphones, by accessing the phone’s diagnostic/maintenance features, in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone. Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data.

In the US, for instance, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls, VoIP and broadband internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by federal law enforcement agencies. Computers are also a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software (either physically or remotely), such as the FBI’s “Magic Lantern” and Computer and IP verification (CIPAV), on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorised access to this data. Another form of computer surveillance, known as TEMPEST, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters.

Surveillance cameras are often connected to a recording device, IP network, and/or watched by a security guard/law enforcement officer. In the UK, for instance, there are about 4.2 million surveillance cameras — one camera for every 14 people. (via How other countries fare).

The Red Rage

There is a increasing chorus in India that such a ‘surveillance’ regime is needed in India also. A undermanned police managed a low crime society in India till now. The excuse of terrorism is being used to advance the case for a police state in India also – like the UK, USA, China etc.

Lalgarh has proved one thing – purusharth in India is still alive and well. Moksh मोक्ष is the ultimate aim of all humans – and the meaning of moksh is freedom, emancipation, deliverance. Moksh is one of the four objectives (धर्म अर्थ, काम, मोक्ष)in the Indian ethical code of पुरुषार्थ.

Santhals and the British

In Lalgarh, middle aged Santhal women, armed with spears, axes and knives came out to battle a repressive state which sold out to Big Business. For nearly a 100 years, a 100 years ago, the same Santhals had fought the British Raj earlier. When so many women come out in the open, with bows and arrows, one thing is clear.

There are more where they come from.

The excuse for extending power

So, whether it is Red Rage or Green Jihad, the State just needs an excuse to extend its power – and this ‘surveillance’ raj is one part of it.

My colleague, Quentin de la Bédoyère, is blogging on the Dublin report into clerical sex abuse. Join him here for a discussion of what Catholics must learn from the report.

From Independent Online

Catholic Church apologises as report reveals how senior clerics protected priests from scandal despite ‘perversion of power and trust visited on helpless and innocent children’

By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent

Friday, 27 November 2009

The Catholic church in Ireland yesterday offered abject apologies following a report which exposed in harrowing detail how its most senior figures had covered up thousands of cases of child abuse by priests.

The report revealed that four consecutive Archbishops of Dublin had effectively colluded for more than a quarter of a century in ensuring that the activities of paedophile priests did not reach the public gaze.

It is the latest in a series of hugely damaging reports on the church and children, all of which have concluded that it routinely placed its own image before the protection of the vulnerable. The conclusion of this report, produced by a Commission of Investigation after years of research, could hardly have been more damning.

It said: “The Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets.”

It further said the Archdiocese “did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state”. In many cases, reports of abuse were not followed up by police, it said, finding that senior police often regarded priests as being outside their remit.

The authors of the report, including a judge and two lawyers, examined a sample of complaints concerning 46 priests. Concluding that these had abused more than 320 children, they added that it was abundantly clear that child sexual abuse by clerics was widespread. They wrote: “One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis during his ministry which lasted for over 25 years.”

In his apology for what he called “the revolting story” set out in the report, Diarmuid Martin, the present Archbishop of Dublin, said it highlighted “devastating failings of the past”. He added that the sexual abuse of a child was a crime in both civil law and canon law.

The report pointed out that, in turning a blind eye to the crimes of priests, the Archbishops had been in breach not just of the law of the land but also of canon law. Several of the Archbishops were qualified canon and civil lawyers. In one case an abusive priest was not reported to the police by an Archbishop despite having abused several young people while acting as a chaplain in a children’s hospital. In many cases, abusing priests were simply moved to different parishes.

The Irish police force yesterday said it was “deeply sorry” that victims had not received the level of response and protection they were entitled to.

The Irish government also issued an apology, promising to pursue clerical child abusers. It said the report “shows clearly that a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the Archdiocese”.

It added: “The perpetrators must continue to be brought to justice, and the people of Ireland must know that this can never happen again.

The authors, having examined tens of thousands of files from the Archdiocese, dismissed church claims that senior clerics were unaware of the scale of the problem. They said it was highly significant that in 1987 the church had taken out an insurance policy to help cover future legal costs involved in defending compensation claims by victims.

They concluded: “The taking out of insurance was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the Archdiocese.”

One of the Archbishops, Desmond Connell, took a legal case to prevent investigators having access to more than 5,000 files kept in a private vault. He dropped the case under pressure from Archbishop Martin. It was revealed that the Connell files included complaints against at least 29 priests.

The Christian Leaders uniting on Political issues are from 145 evangelical and both Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders. This group has created a declaration (manifesto), stating this: 

 “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence to: participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we (the above) bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnership, treat them as marriages or the equivalent.”

Stop! This spiritual waste of time…We need jobs, food, clothing and shelter for too many Americans. Is the Church a santuary for these men and women? Are the doors of these huge structures wide open? Why not?

And! This minister believes that our gay folk deserve a world without moral pandering and a stupid manifesto. If embryo-destructive research saves lives…Abortion is not a playground for religion…It is a human situation both personal and personal and personal and…Old white men telling young women what they should do with? How about assisted suicide and euthanasia? This is again a human situation and is personal and personal and personal and…

DUBLIN – Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law and most fellow clerics turned a blind eye, an investigation ordered by Ireland’s government concluded Thursday.

—–

Thursday’s report detailed “sample” cases of 46 priests who faced 320 documented complaints, although the investigators said they were confident that the priests had abused many more children than that. They cited testimony from one priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children, and another priest who said he abused a child approximately every two weeks for 25 years.

Just 11 of the 46 ultimately were convicted of abusing children — typically decades after church leaders learned of their crimes — while two others are scheduled to face Dublin criminal court actions within months. Fourteen are dead and most of the rest have been defrocked or barred from parish duties. Just six are still active priests.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091126/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse

I shouldn’t be surprised, I shouldn’t be sickened, but I am.

But, on a positive note, I have received acknowledgment from two child protection representatives and I may have tracked down the identity of one of the priests who abused my family members.  One of the child protection representatives is willing to interview my father, maybe he will get some closure, and that will be a blessing.

            For the past year or so, the District of Columbia’s city council has been engaged in a tug-of-war between factions as it has attempted to conduct the people’s business: first, it was a meddlesome Congress that tried to supersede all local direction of the city’s gun-control policy.  Then, an ongoing proxy battle with an arrogant mayor resulted in clashes related to education, recreation, and contracting policy.  Now, the Archdiocese of Washington is threatening to withdraw from its Catholic Charities partnership with the city—in which the Church provides social services to some 68,000 homeless and poor residents—if the council proceeds with its plan to legalize same-sex marriage next month.

            There are plenty of freedom-of-conscience provisions built into the bill: the Church would not be required to marry same-sex couples or allow them access to non-public spaces of their property.  They would, however, be required to follow non-discriminatory guidelines for entities receiving government money—e.g. extending health insurance to and facilitating adoptions for gay couples.  Since Catholic Charities would not, out of moral reservation, be able to meet those requirements, it would thus not be eligible to do business with the city.

            Reactions have been mixed: some council members say that the Church is not indispensible to the city and should not dictate its policy.  Other people are sure that more concessions could be made to satisfy Church tenets without subjecting gays to wholesale prejudice.  Still others have argued that the measure should be put on the ballot, as has been the case in dozens of states.  Mostly, this argument has come from gay marriage foes, confident that a law will be rejected if submitted to voters (a board of elections and ethics has twice denied a ballot initiative or referendum to go forward). 

            One recent opinion article in The Washington Post presented an alternative version of that argument: a gay man in D.C. who writes, “I yearn, too, to be married someday, but at what cost? To force same-sex marriage into law through the caprice of judges, the sympathies of a majority of various legislatures or even the fiat of a president can be viewed as a kind of tyranny.”  While it’s common for parties who are on the losing side of policy fights to rail against “activist” judges and legislators that don’t respect the “will of the people,” it is strange to see that sentiment from someone who is benefitting greatly from those two sources of legal redress.

            There are two main points to be made about this controversy: one, is that not all opinions are equal.  I can, at a basic level, understand why the Catholic church would deny religious services to gay couples: for the reason that spiritual beliefs cannot be legislated out of existence, nor are they something that the believer can choose to have.  To have faith or not is hardly a free and simple choice for most believers—although the same can be true about being homosexual.  (And yes, I realize that the religious community is not monolithic—there are undoubtedly Catholics who would gladly marry two homosexuals.)  However, governmental protection to practice one’s beliefs does not mean that discrimination is legal.  To say that the Church’s views on sexuality should be given equal consideration as should views on sexuality from a scientific, cultural, or human rights perspective is erroneous.

            Secondly, the will of the people is a fickle protector of civil rights.  Even though it is our duty to resist governmental encroachment on our liberties, the legislatures and the courts were never intended to be a reflection of popular opinion.  As dysfunctional as our Congress appears at times, the elected men and women always have to take a view of what the greater good to society is when they cast their vote, which sometimes entails offending their constituents.  The courts, to an even greater degree, do not merely affirm and clarify policy that the legislature has passed, but they sometimes must overturn it when it violates the Constitution.

            People (conservatives in particular) abhor the notion that one unelected judge can alter the course of history by deciding which laws are appropriate or inappropriate by the principles of our society.  Take these words of an ambivalent Supreme Court justice in the early 1950s: “how is it that the Constitution this morning forbids what for three-quarters of a century it has tolerated or approved?”  The case he was reviewing was Brown v. Board of Education.  The man was Robert Jackson, a liberal who was having doubts about overturning segregation laws (even though a decade earlier he was in the minority of justices who voted to uphold the rights of Japanese-American citizens who had been placed in internment camps).

         In the end, of course, he voted to end segregation.  But for him and others like him who have spurned the popular will to uphold the Constitution, I would hope that the people who are elected or appointed to run the government are chosen not just for their knowledge of policy, but for their ability to listen to all sides and create laws that demonstrate the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Question: why does the Catholic Church put so much time, effort and money in anti-gay ballot initiatives, but not do anything similar against the death penalty, or against politicians who supported the invasion of Iraq?

Norm, remain calm. It’s not a big deal. It probably doesn’t mean anything.

I had a conversation with my brother last night. I gave him and my sister rosaries. As I was briefly telling him about how to pray it, and he reluctantly listened, the conversation drifted pleasantly from Mary (mostly her perpetual virginity) to things like Eucharist, Baptism, general morality, and how the idea of Authority was at the core of these doctrinal differences. I made it clear that I wasn’t trying to convert him (though I guess I was a little). I left it the conversation with this bit of advice: to not simply accept where he is because that’s where he is. I told him not to stay at his church because its where our mom wants him or because its where I first took him when I started going to church. I told him to stay there because its where he honestly believed the truth to be. I told him to just continually pray that God would show him truth, and that he would be unafraid to follow God, but to be willing to truly listen, and not to make up his mind before he listened to God (good advice to for me too as I discern the priesthood).

I overheard him say to my mom about 20 minutes ago that he kind of understands why I chose Catholicism (not so much that I chose Catholicism, but that I chose to follow Christ, but he’ll understand that someday). Of course my mom said “Oh Lord” and said that the rule was that he could choose to go anywhere, but he had to talk to the pastor at the Baptist church first. That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t think my mom is any position to make rules about what my brother must do if he decides to accept the truth. But that’s a little off track.

Anyways, I pray for my brother and sister every day, entrusting them to Mary and the Saints, and they do pray for them.