The Catholic Bishops of England Don't Buy Bertone

Another crack in an already weak foundation.

This high-level vocal disagreement with Rome is startling and significant and a throwback to those centuries of yore when bishops and cardinals duked out their differences and a pope could lose power, be required to fend off rivals and "heretics", or fight for his life. All over the globe of Catholicism, even the polite and less pugnacious bishops are climbing into lifeboats.

But the Catholic Church in England and Wales went further, issuing a rare rebuttal of Cardinal Bertone's comments.

Father Marcus Stock, general secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said: "There is no empirical data which concludes that sexual orientation is connected to child sexual abuse.

Legislation to watch

In Connecticut, the General Assembly is considering a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations in the case of childhood sexual abuse.

The ordinaries (bishops) of Connecticut's archdiocese and two suffragan sees (Hartford, Bridgeport and Norwich) are opposed to this law because it might cost them a lot of money and money is what they love more than accountability or compassion.

In a letter begging Connecticut Catholics to oppose the bill, the bishops say this:

This bill would retroactively eliminate the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits related to allegations of child sexual abuse.  Connecticut already has the longest retroactive statute in the United States – 30 years past the age of 18.  Over the past several years in states that have even temporarily eliminated the statutes, it has caused the bankruptcy of at least seven dioceses. House Bill 5473 would make Connecticut the only State without a statute of limitations.  This bill would put all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk.

 The nature of bankruptcy litigation puts all assets at risk, even if your parish has had no past incidents, reports or allegations of child abuse.  That is why it is important for you to join other Catholics across Connecticut in opposing this legislation.

 And this is not simply about bankruptcy or the loss of property.  Ultimately the legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, threatening our parishes, our schools, and our Catholic Charities.

Once again, the bishops demonstrate that loss of revenue is more important to them than justice. Particularly sly is the way they try to enlist some parishioners by reminding them that their parish assets will be at risk even if those dusty old abuse cases involved other parishes.

Despicable stuff. I hope the people of Connecticut respond by telling those trembling bishops that lifting the statute of limitations would not cause bankruptcy. Their cover-ups, coddling and facilitation of pedophiles would be the cause of the bankruptcy. I hope the Catholics of Connecticut respond by telling those bishops that a Gone-With-The -Windy reversal of fortune might be good for them and that their expensive services are expendable and that their sacraments ought to be freely given and shared, and that all the rest of the institutional baggage that has encumbered Catholicism ought to be left to other bureaucracies led by healthier men and women.

When bishops Lori, Cote and Mansell get to heaven, I wonder how their invoking of the statute of limitations will enhance their efforts to limbo dance their way under the velvet rope at the pearly gates. (And isn't Man sell a lovely name for a bishop caught in these straits!)

Scahill, Lothstein and Bertone

While I get my taxes done, I recommend you read the following. There will be a test.

Read this reflection on the East Longmeadow MA pastor Father James Scahill who has called for the resignation of B16. I can't imagine that he'll not be forced to pay for his courage and integrity.

Here is a neat summary that may help those who are scratching their heads and wondering how the Catholic Church came to centralize power and authority in the person of the Pope rather than Jesus, and how that church moved from allowing bishops to be a garden of differences to demanding that all her bishops speak with one voice.

Here is some valuable truth spoken by psychologist Leslie Lothstein who has treated more than 300 priests-with-problems and knows something about real pedophilia.

Of course, you can contrast those articles with the words of the ignorant Cardinal Bertone who seems to be living on a planet of desperate denial.

Bertone picks the wrong fight.

Cardinal Bertone can't seriously expect to get away with saying that the pedophile priest crisis is a gay problem rather than a celibacy problem, but that is what he has said.

He will rue this day.

As you'd imagine, I am so far beyond addressing this latest bit of mystifying insanity that any dissection would dignify it. Also, I really must prepare and file my taxes.

Rest assured, if you see the quiet waters recede around this cardinal's ankles, it is only the sucking out of what will soon return as a tsunami. Girlfriends, hold my gold.

Bagnasco would be a strange bedfellow

Cardinal Bagnasco is no friend of the Gay. Now he wants heads to roll in the pedophile priest scandal, but if his head is the only one left enshouldered, we won't be any better off.

This is interesting Vatican politics. Bagnasco is an insider/outsider. The current pope made him a cardinal, but he came up through the Italian ranks and is not really a papal palace courtier. I suspect he'd like to clean house from bottom to top which would be self-serving.

He'd deny that he is lumping B16 in with the guilty, but he certainly is doing just that. A Cardinal bus driver en route from Genoa to throw the bishop of Rome under his tires?

Bottom line here: never before have there been so many signs of fracturing in the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church. It's turning into a game of every-Cardinal-for-himself. The 67 year old Bagnasco is probably sensing his own mortality and has figured out that the longer B16 lingers, the small are his own chances for succession.

There is at least one good bishop in America

Thirteen year ago, Matthew Clark, the bishop of Rochester, New York, delivered a sermon at a Mass for gay and lesbian people. When I read his beautiful words, I am astonished at how far the Catholic Church has regressed and I wonder if he got some backlash because of his efforts to establish equality for the gay and lesbian Catholic community. I wonder if he continued to quietly work on behalf of that equality. He is still the bishop of Rochester. I wonder if his beliefs cost him promotions to higher office. Before he was a bishop, he was briefly my personal spiritual director at the North American College in Rome. I never talked openly with him about sexuality. Maybe I should have. Here is part of that sermon.

To my brothers and sisters, gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, you have told me over years of conversations with you and you have relayed to me through friends with whom I have spoken, that far more often than not, our faith community seems forbidding; that in it you feel unwelcome; that your own struggles, issues, questions, joys, sorrows, talents, needs, gifts, are not respected as they should be. I hope I can say with confidence that this gathering this afternoon symbolizes a widespread sentiment among the people of our diocese, that we'd like to do a better job on that. And we would like to convey to you in a much more rewarding and genuine way, the respect that we have for your integrity, your goodness and your gifts. And at the same time, I hope that we could say to you with equal honesty that we are the weaker to the degree that we do not enjoy the wonderful gifts God gives you for the sake of the community.

So may I ask you please to forgive us for all the ways witting and unwitting that we have failed to honor and respect you. And I may ask that after extending that invitation, I hope in the name of our whole community, that you would be willing to step forward with us to share our journeys, enjoying the good things that we have and sharing the good things that God gives you, so that together having made this mutual commitment, we might show more clearly, rightly, and lovingly, the face of Christ to all of our sisters and brothers who yearn for meaning and for value in life. I hope that you will accept that invitation as coming from our whole community, and in a very honest and sincere way. Please do join us for our worship, our struggles, our service and allow us to make right the things that perhaps we've made wrong in the past. I would be very grateful to you if you would consider that invitation.

And lastly I would like to say to you that not only does this event mean a great deal to me because of the season in which it occurs, the season of Lent, it also means a great deal to me in light of our unfolding Synod experience in which all of us have committed ourselves to--as our first priority--to grow in the knowledge and love of Christ and of our faith. And it seems to me, and I speak only for myself in this regard, but if you can identify with it in some way please do so, with it. The very fact that we have convened this gathering and invited people to it has raised, in me at least, a very strong awareness that all of us have a great deal to learn about gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. I, my mail, my conversations are filled with what I can judge to be unfortunate presumptions about gay and lesbian people, a lot of stereotyping in a very negative way and a lot of lack of information that all of us need to have if we are to understand one another in ways that I really believe that God wants us to know one another's hearts.

I think, for example, of how we all need to be as much in touch as we can possibly be with biblical scholarship as it applies to this question. Because I'm afraid the bible is used in ways that are not life-giving, but destructive as it's quoted about gay and lesbian people. I think we need to learn from the human sciences the research of which has yielded a lot of new information that I believe we have not as yet integrated into our knowledge and value systems and which we do not appreciate as elements which can alter honestly held but incorrect assumptions about other persons in our community.

And lastly, and I think in a certain way, above all, we really need to know the faith and life experience of gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. Do we know their stories? Do we know the challenges they face? Do we know the richness of their spirit? Do we know the ways in which their faith has been tested? Do we know how some of our conduct and patterns can make their journeys more painful than they need to be? I raise these questions, not in any sense in the spirit of accusation or blame, but simply to convey, as best I can, what our sisters and brothers who are gay or lesbian have said to me and what has been said to me by their mothers and dads, grandmas and grandpas, and other people who love them, who are concerned that their offspring, whom they cherish, are not held in equal regard simply because they are gay and lesbian persons.

Equal regard. He spoke those words on March 1, 1997. He gave permission for his sermon to be appear on the internet. He was ahead of his time. Unfortunately, he still is.

"Consider the good" said Ratzinger

The fallout from these terrible disclosures and revelations of the mindset of the hierarchy is simple and unavoidable.

Your priest, bishop, cardinal or pope is no longer considered holy. He is not even on par with a shaman or witch doctor who both might make outrageous claims but have as their goal the healing of others. Priests are now considered ordained boogeymen who might present serious danger to your children. This is certainly unfair to the many good priests who continue to provide service within the framework of shame but they could be speaking up. They could be calling for new leadership and change. They could be calling for the ordination of women and married men and an end to mandatory celibacy. Instead, they remain silent and so must share in the guilt.

The Roman Catholic Church has been preoccupied with maintaining its "image" through secrecy and disregard for its victims (sorry to be so blunt). Going forward, families will not entrust their children to these men. We are raising a generation of Catholic children who will sense our distrust and our shielding of them from the unhealthy interference of clergy.

Do you think those kids will grow up with an allegiance to Catholicism in their hearts and with a willingness to financially support the infrastructure and programming of Rome? No. And that is why we needn't worry about the outcome of our "Catholics4Equality" efforts. The next two generations will resolve this on their own. Recent surveys and polling of the youngest Catholics make this quite clear.

The Art of Blogging - A GALLA Panel

We had a great time, and the attendees were delightful.
Here are the Miami Herald's Steve Rothaus, author Steven Petrow, Joe Jervis, and to my left, the Stonewall Library's Chad Thilborger. I don't really need to build in the links to these bloggerati, do I?

A Stupid Bishop in Tenerife

This bishop is just plain stupid. Yes, there are those very rare times when an altar boy comes on to a priest. I myself had that experience but that has nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the pedophile priest problem. And this is not the time to be discussing that, and it is stupid and shameful for him to mention that at this time and in the context of the current situation.

While we are on this altogether inappropriate subject, I always assumed that kids who came on to priests were themselves already victims of abuse and were using the dialect they had learned. That made it particularly frightening to be the object of that behavior. In other cases, I just chalked it up to the kind of non-sexual childhood crush and hero worship that many of us go through as kids. A healthy adult knows how to react to it and will show the kid how healthy adults behave.
This bishop is emblematic of the sickness that inhabits the Roman Catholic church. This is disgusting and it makes me terrifically angry but I am glad it is coming to light and everyone will see what these bishops are made of. They are digging their own grave.

Sorry to be so angry about this, but it just gets worse and worse and they are dragging down the church that some of us once loved.

PS: I've been to Tenerife. Gorgeous.

Money and Sex - How to Gild the Vatican

Finally, a report that discloses clearly what we always knew to be true.

When I was in Rome, the Mercedes bus carrying the Legionaries of Christ would sometimes pause at the light while I'd cross the street on the way to class. They  were, to a man, incredibly handsome in an identical way. Dark hair meticulously parted. Square jawed. Tall. There was such fear in their eyes as they looked at me and then quickly looked away. They kept to themselves. Rarely did they interact with us at the Gregorian University. We were in jeans and they were in identical black suits and Roman collars. Some of them escaped. This is a sad chapter in Catholicism. This is not an era of saints.

An Easter Parade of Shame

The Art of Blogging - A GALLA Panel

On Friday, I'm moderating a panel of bloggers at the annual three day Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Literary Festival. For more info, go to the Stonewall Library and Archives.

Songs in the Key of F2M

I totally enjoyed my South Florida Gay News interview with handsome F2M transsexual Mark Angelo Cummings.

Bob Schieffer's Commentary

Reader Stephen D thought we should see this.

Pope Difficult the Last - A Golden Calf Led To Slaughter

Just when you think they would have gotten control of their message, a pope whose only appropriate garb is sack cloth, appears in spun gold. Hard to avoid the comparisons. Do we dance before this golden idol? Or, is this a pascal sacrificial lamb that Cardinal Sodano is proclaiming? If I am metaphorically confused, what are the average American Catholics feeling when they read this?

Dressed in gold robes and shielded from a cool drizzle by a canopy, Benedict looked weary as he listened to Sodano's speech at the start of Mass in the cobblestone square bedecked with daffodils, tulips and azaleas.

''With this spirit today we rally close around you, successor to (St.) Peter, bishop of Rome, the unfailing rock of the holy church,'' Sodano said. ''Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers.''

The thought has begun to cross my mind that Cardinal Sodano and all the others who most ardently sing the praises of B16 know full well what they are doing: making a dirge from the sidelines of his cart ride to the gallows. This could be the most genteel throwing of anyone under a bus that has ever been performed. Perhaps the hierarchy has decided that Pope Difficult the Last needs to go, and that the only way to do it is to magnify the absurdity of the situation. As tone deaf as these men can be, surely they know the meaning of the deaf ear.

Does this pope, like Miss Diana Ross, still believe he can pack an arena and sell out a world tour? Granted, he's got Sodano and another 170 cardinals singing back-up.

According to the report there were only tens of thousands in attendance. In my day, whenever we did one of those outdoor papal masses - we called them papal picnics - the faithful numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Catholics for Equality Celebrate Easter in DC

Catholics For Equality incorporated yesterday as a 501c3 and a 501c4. Don't check for the website now because it is not yet live.

A few minutes ago, at the HRC headquarters while internet political strategist Phil Attey and Catholics for Marriage Equality in Maine's Anne Underwood laugh, Progress Now's Aniello Alioto models a papal outfit he will wear at a party later today and appropriately demonstrates his ability to put his foot into his infallible mouth.

An Outrageous But Impotent Attempt To Paint The Criminal As Victim.

Being asked to preach to the pope on Good Friday is a very high honor. Many years ago, on another Good Friday, my Italian friend Renato (now Archbishop Renato) said "Let's go up into the balcony over the Pauline Chapel and listen to the preacher. It's someone from Poland. He's supposed to be really good. And handsome." In those days, Renato and I had clearance to wander just about anywhere in the Vatican except the private papal apartments. We quietly stepped up to the balustrade in a dark alcove high above the gigantic Michaelangelo pictures and watched Pope Paul VI kneeling to receive the homily of the man who would become JohnPaul II. He preached in Latin. It didn't matter if the words were difficult to follow. He was riveting.

Today, Good Friday, a monk named Father Cantalamessa preached to Benedict XVI. He is the pope's "house preacher." He likened accusations against the pope in the sex abuse scandal to violence suffered by the Jews.

Are you surprised that the reaction has not been favorable?

Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said Cantalamessa's remarks were "a so-far-unheard-of insolence."

"It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust," Kramer said. "So far I haven't seen St. Peter burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests. I'm without words. The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims."

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, U.S. director of interreligious relations for the American Jewish Committee, called the comments "an unfortunate use of language."

"The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of 6 million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault," Greenebaum said.

These grumbling priests, bishops and cardinals just don't understand. Repentance, contrition, penance, accountability and willing self-presentation to judgement for crimes and sins is the only response that makes sense. Anything else is disgusting.

So much tarnish on everything in the Vatican.

Scarlet Prince vs Grey Lady

Just when you think there'd be a Holy Week pause in the battle between The Vatican and The New York Times, we get this!

You know things are escalating when they send in Darth Levada, who has B16's old job.

I've read the full text of the letter from this Prince. It is at various times amusing, bitter, misleading, spun, scapegoatish, childish and ultimately very sad.

Keep in mind that this is a letter from a prince. The Roman Catholic Church has about 175 princes. They bear the title ''Cardinal". They have coats of arms with more tassles than do the coats of arms of Catholic bishops. Seriously. They wear many yards of scarlet watered silk. Just wanted to be sure you know who wrote that letter.

When this prince starts a letter by saying

In our melting pot of peoples, languages and backgrounds, Americans are not noted as examples of “high” culture. 

the condescension is palpable and makes it very difficult to hear anything that follows eventhough he himself is an American. (God, where in this twisted tortured church is there a leader with good instincts and a good heart and a good mind? Surely there are one or two out of 175 who speak as would Jesus have spoken in this circumstance.)

He goes on to repeatedly state that criminal authorities had been notified about the abuse cases, implying that we shouldn't be angry at just the bishops. Thin skirts behind which to hide, I think.

His disdain for Archbishop Weakland is obvious. In at least two instances in the letter he refers to him simply as "Weakland" not supplying his title, something that is never done in  this sort of writing. This might be a stretch, but it seems to me that the Prince is tossing him under the bus and there are many who will understand this to be another example of the insidious hierarchical effort to fuse homosexuals with sexual predators.

His lengthy efforts to paint B16 as a man who should not be criticized in these matters is feeble. He's right when he also says about Americans

But we can take pride as a rule in our passion for fairness.

It is exactly that American passion for fairness that brought down another prince, Cardinal Bernard Law. Why does Cardinal Levada think that Americans will not apply that same passion for justice to the pope?

And the way he spins the Vatican non-response of leniency (silence signifying consent?) to the pedophile Father Murphy is a daring and intricate set of steps that should earn him a spot on Dancing With The Stars.

His conclusion returns to the condescension of his opening statement.

As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s “disturbing report.” But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his “successor” Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

No time for this, Your Eminence? Oh honey you better clear your calendar.

On Queer New York: The Traynoir Towers

In which, my husband, the dirty-minded cleverkin, makes me laugh.

The Petty Gossip of Dominant Opinion?

The Pope is 82 years old. Funny thing about octogenarians. They get pretty set in their ways. The ones who were always gracious and loving and wise and magnanimous reap what they have sown in the care they receive from friends and family. The ones who have been heartless and judgmental and careless with those entrusted to them still receive the maintenance and respect that good people always extend to anyone who is elderly, but a persistently hateful elder doesn't get the luxury of a pass in matters of sin, crime, justice and reparation.

The disgruntled German Shepherd doesn't care for what is being said about him, and he used his Palm Sunday sermon to say that faith in God helps lead one “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”

Oh, Mary, how the congealed liebfraumilch of human kindness doth stagnate in your icy Bavarian veins!