Priorities?

Our dear bishops in the U.S. concluded their semi-annual meeting two days ago and I'm sure we're all elated that they had the courage to tackle some really challenging topics during that meeting. 

Their first vote addressed that vexing problem plaguing so many American Catholics...what to do about the canticles used in the Liturgy of the Hours.  Well, friends, sleep peacefully tonight.  They voted to use a new English translation of those canticles - "in a style similar to the Revised Grail Psalms, with emphasis on sprung rhythms and faithful translation."  Whew!  Glad they got that sorted out!  It's easy to see why they voted on this first, and quite frankly, a bit surprising that they didn't handle this pressing issue at an earlier date by calling a special meeting or something.

Their second vote pertained to priest formation / seminary training.    If you love the "bells and smells," non-pastoral, uber-orthodoxy with a heaping helping of spiritual and emotional immaturity emerging from seminaries of late, you are in luck because they decided to continue existing priest formation norms without any changes whatsoever for the next five years.  As Mass participation plummets and young folks flee the church, at a vote of 179 "yes", 1 "no" and 1 abstention, they overwhelmingly decided to pat themselves on the back and continue current course and speed.  Can we conclude that further reduced Mass participation is their desired outcome since they voted to continue a formation program that seems to contribute significantly to laypeople's disgust with and departure from the Church? 

Their third and final vote approved the working draft of their strategic priorities for 2017 - 2020.  Those priorities are:

1. Family and marriage - a topic where they have minimal to no expertise and instead rely upon sexist stereotypes and unrealistic fairytale-caliber romanticized notions which reinforce sexist stereotypes
2. Evangelization - their euphemism for spreading the "good news" of how infallibly right they are
3. Religious freedom - their program for obstructing the religious freedom of others, controlling women, promoting sexism, and discriminating against gays
4. Human life and dignity - which lately has had a focus confined almost exclusively to in utero life
5. Vocations and ongoing formation - which by their previous vote seems to be a strategic priority to do nothing for the next five years

In my company, domestic trips average about $1,500 per person but we have very frugal travel expense policies.  We might surmise that a group of guys who live in mansions do not so let's round up their average to $2,000 per person.  With 181 bishops in attendance, an assumed one lackey per bishop, and adding in venue costs that likely comes out to about $750,000 - $1,000,000 invested (squandered?) on gathering in person to make these decisions.  They will again meet in November and again incur this magnitude of expense.  Might I suggest using Skype and Survey Monkey in the future?  The expenses then might better align with the value of their discussions and decisions.

I've read several articles bemoaning that these priorities do not reflect those of Pope Francis.  How much do they reflect Jesus' priorities? 

Happy Irony Week!!!

Boys and girls, a strange week it is indeed, and it’s only Monday.  First, I read an article by Sr. Mary Ann Walsh in “America” magazine touting the Catholic Church as superior in offering career advancement opportunities for women as compared to secular industries.  Then I gazed upon the bizarre female bondage artistic choice for the cover of the Pontifical Council on Culture’s working document regarding women. (see image below...) 

It must be “happy irony week” in the Catholic Church because what else explains all this? 

Let’s first enjoy the "America" magazine article’s irony in and of itselt.  However, I will preface my comments with this thought: I work in the secular world as an executive and I’ve also done a lot of volunteering in the Catholic Church.  “Career advancement opportunities for women” just has never been a phrase I use when describing the Catholic Church…never…not once. 

Sr. Mary Ann’s article highlights statistics indicating the percentage of women CEOs for Catholic affiliated organizations such as hospitals is higher than for secular companies.  She fails to mention that those institutions cannot call themselves “Catholic” without the approval of the reigning bishop, the CEO of the local diocese.  How many of those bishop/CEOs are women?   The answer is “the empty set.”

Furthermore, many of those Catholic institutions were created by religious sisters – the same women who of late have been labeled by the reigning (male) hierarchs as being “radical feminists” as though they suffer from some incurable terminal disease.  So, I’m trying to get this straight… Women who lead Catholic institutions are not radical feminists when they can be used as decoys for diverting attention from the church’s stifling sexism and discrimination?  But when those women try to act in any way with which the local bishop/CEO disapproves, then they are labeled “radical feminists" and fired?  Way to showcase those female leadership opportunities the church offers…

There’s also irony that an article about the virtual cornucopia of church female leadership opportunities appears in “America” magazine, a Jesuit periodical…because the Jesuits have precisely zero women in their organization.  ‘Tis true; the Society of Jesus…an organization named after a guy whose society carried signature inclusion of women…does not itself permit women to join.  Instead they adhere to a pre-US civil rights era segregationist’s mentality of “separate but equal.” 

And then there’s the irony that the woman who wrote the article takes a check working for the Society of Jesus.  But then Sr. Mary Ann also works as the Media Relations Director for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops…another group which has had precisely zero female CEOs.  Therefore, in both of her communications roles, Sr. Mary Ann answers to men.  I guess it’s actually more a case of tragic irony than comical irony that she whose public voice requires male approval wrote an article boasting about the church’s advocacy for women.  That perhaps signifies the extent to which male hegemony can impact some people’s thinking.

But, the most exquisite irony comes from the timing of the article’s publication - the same week that the Pontifical Council on Culture holds a four-day Plenary Assembly to discuss women’s culture.  The council’s members include how many women?  Oh, that would be zero again!  See, women have advanced so far in church leadership that a Pontifical Council can gather...completely straight-faced...without women members and feel they are qualified to make decisions about women.  Nothing says “we really value you gals” like excluding them from the pontifical council that’s going to discuss them. 

I don’t mean to complain or be fussy but let me just give a quick demographic run-down on the council’s members and you decide for yourself just how in-touch these guys are with women around the world…  There are 13 Cardinals, 5 Archbishops, 8 Bishops, 1 Monsignor, 1 Rector (yes, he’s a priest; did you even need to ask…) and 3 Laymen.

Since these guys are…well guys…and they wanted to get together for four days and do nothing but talk non-stop about girls…they had a bright idea.  No, it was not to invite women to join their council as members…what, are you drunk?  No, they had some Italian actress make a video asking women to submit one minute or shorter videos about who they are…because evidently they believe nothing of importance about women requires more than a minute to explain.  By the way, I sent them a link to my blog but I did not get an invitation to participate in their meeting. 

The irony of the 31 all-male membership writing the following statement as the opening salvo of their working document about women just kind of says it all…“In our Plenary, the invaluable contribution of our Members and Consultors will allow us to gather some aspects of women’s cultures in four thematic stages, in order to identify possible pastoral paths which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue with the world today in this sphere.”  You see, they’re going to “listen and dialogue” about women by not listening to or dialoging with them.  This is clearly miracle fodder. 

That’s really the high-point of the working document.  It just goes downhill from there with sexist ideas and language.

In fairness, I must mention that 7 of the 35 Consultors are women – 2 religious and 5 laywomen.   So the members are 31 men and then there are 28 more male consultors bringing the male attendee count to 59 as compared to 7 women consultors.  I just have this sneaking suspicion that those 7 women have been carefully vetted and chosen based upon their parrot-like ability to repeat what the hierarchy says about women.  I am not expecting them to contribute in a way that represents me or women like me or pretty much the majority of women in the world.

The four themes they will discuss are:

Theme 1: Between equality and difference: the quest for equilibrium

Theme 2: “Generativity” as a symbolic code

Theme 3: The female body: between culture and biology

Theme 4: Women and religion: flight or new forms of participation in the life of the church

As a woman, albeit one whose voice is not desired to contribute to this discussion since we have those 31 male council members who are way more qualified to talk about being female than me, the themes tell me more about the men who wrote them than about women.  Are you really struggling with the concept that equality can exist within a diverse population?  Do you really think that women who leave the church (often with the kiddies in tow) are forming a new way of participating in church when they say, “this place has a toxic sexist culture that I can’t tolerate anymore?”  By the way, there are women who are doing this; they’re called women priests.  You’re not too keen on them the last I recall.

The theme regarding the female body doesn’t mention anything about correcting the mountains of theological conclusions drawn from scads of inaccurate understandings about human biology.  Instead it talks about that really pressing woman’s issue…plastic surgery???  And quite frankly, I’ve read and re-read the section about "generativity as symbolic code" and it truly beats the ever-loving shit out of me as to what that’s supposed to be about.

So, I wish the council well in its discussions.  I imagine its meeting outcomes will be more a source for entertainment than theological insight about women because it begins on faulty ground: it’s a meeting about women called by men in a council with exclusively male membership to provide guidance to an exclusively male clerical population.  If this truly were about listening to and dialoging with women, it would be led by women, with a majority of council members as women.  It would consider new ways of being church including female ordinations.  It would talk about more substantive topics related to female human biology than plastic surgery.

Well, I better get off this merry-go-round of irony lest it make me any more dizzy than it already has. But my parting thoughts are these.  What were you thinking when you chose the headless woman's figure with breasts and pubic region tied up in ropes as your report cover artwork?  Just exactly what message are you trying to convey?  Are women's minds so inconsequential to you that a beheaded woman was ok provided her reproductive parts were on full display?  Could I please get a psychological analysis read-out on each council members' attitudes towards women because that image on your report cover makes me wonder if you all start from a very, very twisted sick mental attitude towards women.

US bishops staying the course...

What a curious week.  On one hand I read that the US bishops voted in their annual spring meeting to “stay the course.”  My initial reaction?  Oh goody!  We can look forward to yet another year of bishops trying to expand their theocracy’s marginalization of women and homosexuals further into secular government.  And, we’ll be treated to an encore performance hearing them intermittently and indignantly ejaculate “Religious liberty!” while they do it despite them trouncing on others’ religious liberties in the process. …Something about “self-awareness” keeps popping into my head.    

Wait a minute…I’m also getting a reading from my psychic barometer.  It predicts these ejaculations will increase in frequency and volume the closer we get to the US’s mid-term elections.  Yippee!  Can’t wait.

On the other hand, this week I also listened to one of my friends describe how his kids’ Catholic school enrollment has been cut almost in half after experiencing a raging alcoholic pastor followed by one who is a Protestant convert still enveloped in Protestant charismatic preaching styles.  Now, this is a new trend it seems…the iconic mega-church fundamentalist Protestant preacher in Catholic priest’s clothing.  Don’t say the old dogs can’t learn new tricks sometimes.  But, since this trend began before the bishops decided to “stay the course,” I think that means this new tactic is part of the course they will keep.  I can only guess that the objective is to cut Catholic school enrollments in half again. 

On yet another hand, this week I also read the deposition of Robert Carlson, a man some people call “archbishop” but for whom I cannot choke out that word since “bishop” means “overseer” and when I read his deposition he exhibits no behaviors associated with tending his flock like a caretaker.  His favorite three words in the deposition were “I don’t remember.”  It is so prevalent that I wonder if the man can remember what color pants he wears, though presumably it is standard clerical black … every … single … day. 

Here’s a selection of his responses from just the first ten substantive questions in the deposition.

1. “I do not.” (In reference to if he recalled something.)
2. “I don’t remember, but I really can’t say.”
3. “I really can’t remember with any accuracy.”
4. “I don’t remember.”
5. “I don’t remember with any accuracy…”
6. “I don’t remember…”
7. “As I remember, no information came to me about him that I could say with any accuracy.”

Yes, 7 of Bob’s responses to the first 10 questions were variations on “Bob Can’t Remember A Darn Thing.”  I haven’t tallied the responses for the deposition’s full 156 pages, but having read the entire document, I’d guess that the 70% forgetfulness rate is a pretty close estimate if not conservatively low.

I found myself puzzling over this.  If Bob struggles to remember things, how can he remember the teachings of the faith?  Bishops are entrusted with teaching the faith.  How can he teach what he doesn’t remember? 

How can he remember the subtleties associated with tenets of faith when he can’t remember major traumatic events like a priest sexually assaulting kids…repeatedly?  Wasn’t it important enough to carve out a storage location in his brain? Most compassionate people would have a seared permanent image from it, I suspect.  Maybe Bob once stored that info but has subsequently overwritten it with fascinating notions about “religious liberty.”  I don’t know.

Is Bob an incompetent bishop due to his memory issues?  Call me a skeptic, but I think Bob is not being 100% truthful.  I think he’s having selective court-induced memory problems (SCIMP).  If that’s the case, then he is even less competent to be a bishop than if he were suffering early-stage dementia symptoms because selective memory failure falls into the category of “bearing false witness,” one of those pesky Ten Commandments.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a big fan of letting humans be human, including bishop humans.  But, since bishops declare themselves to be THE penultimate guardians of truth, they force us into holding them to a zero-tolerance standard for their deviating from it.  Ergo, if Bob was playing selective memory-loss games with a severe case of SCIMP, he is truly not competent to serve as bishop.

But wait! There’s more!  In addition to forgetting just about everything except his name, Bob expressed during his recent deposition that some years back when handling abuse cases, he didn’t know that sexual assault of a minor was a crime!

Attorney Jeff Anderson: “Archbishop, you knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a kid?”

Bob Carlson (St. Louis’ current sitting archbishop): “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not.”

Attorney Jeff Anderson: “In 1984, you are a Bishop in the – an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul / Minneapolis.  You knew it was a crime then, right?”

Bob Carlson: “I’m not sure if I did or didn’t.”

 (Pages 109 - 110 of the Deposition dated May, 2014)

Good news!  Bob did admit he now knows that raping kids is a crime.  He just doesn’t know when he came to this understanding.  I don’t know what device we have to thank for Bob’s enlightenment either but let’s give three cheers for him grasping this concept sometime before his upcoming 70^th birthday. 

However, despite his eventual enlightenment, this exposes a certain appalling and unacceptable callousness that might justify finding him supremely unqualified to be a bishop.   Please do not suspend your activities awaiting his resignation or apology, though.  No, he is already implementing the brotherhood’s “Stay the course” strategy and issued a statement defending himself instead.  He joins the ranks of so many other bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes in taking this evasive approach regarding sexual abuse, I’m sure he feels it’s a winning strategy.

As an aside, according to Bob’s statement, it seems he, who possesses the intellectual capacity to earn multiple advanced degrees, just didn’t understand the question despite one of those degrees being in … wait for it…. CANON LAW!  I guess Canon Law must be a lot easier to understand than secular law, at least maybe when one is imbued in the culture that produced it.  You saw how confusing the questions were…very tricky in that special, direct, straight-forward manner.  Maybe he’s so used to clerical obfuscations that clarity is just downright unclear for him.  We feel your pain, Bob.  You guys are making less and less sense to most of us faithful, too.  Right back at ya, buddy.

Tying all these strange things together, I realized that the Holy Spirit is working in her mysterious way.  The bishops “stay the course” not only on culture war matters but on accountability and truth-telling too, thus continuing to endanger children in their care.  Coincidentally, they forsake many Catholic traditions, theological teachings, and gospel messages in favor of attracting and ordaining mega-church iconic personalities.  This in turn inspires parents to protect their kids by yanking them from Catholic schools.  Perhaps eventually, the clergy’s sexual assault of children and its cover-up will end when there are no more children in their system?  Can't we please get rid of the incompetent bishops instead? 

Marriage and the Hierarchy

How about we do a marriage assessment today?  Don’t worry single people; you can participate too because you won’t assess your marriage to someone with whom you exchanged rings and vows.  Rather, you will assess your marriage to the Roman Catholic clergy. 

In case you’re unaware that you’re married to the clergy, here’s a quick summary of the church’s teaching.  The clergy believe they wed the church because they think this is required for them to imitate Christ whom they believe married the church.  You might be wondering, “Isn’t it polygamy when multiple men marry the spouse of the person they’re imitating?”   However, the answer to that is either “it’s a mystery” or “twice the square root of the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin simultaneously.”  I forget which.

You also might wonder, “Do they really believe they’re married to the church?”  I think the answer is, “yes” based upon doctrinal writings and hierarchical utterances.  For example, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in his November, 2011 General Assembly address to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), “I look out at 300 brothers each of whom has a ring on his finger, because we're spoken for, we're married.”  Tim definitely thinks he and his brother bishops are married; just look at their rings.

Since the church is the people of God, that means they are married to you and me.  When did this marriage take place?  Well, that is not clear but from the time you are baptized, you’re kind of “in” so let’s say you entered this marriage at your baptism. 

If you’re like me, baptized as a newborn, you probably pulled out your copy of Canon Law and started rattling off all the Canons that are broken by an infant entering this marriage.  However, just in case your life is too interesting to read Canon Law, let me share a few highlights with you here. 

• Canon 1063: both parties must understand the holy state of matrimony before entering it
• Canon 1065: both parties need to have been confirmed
• Canon 1083: minimum valid marrying age is 16 for a boy and 14 for a girl. 
• Canon 1095: marriage is invalid if either party in the marriage lacked reason, or consent
• Canon 1096: both parties must understand marriage’s permanency
• Canon 1103: marriage is invalid if either party is forced or coerced into marriage

Violation of any of these establishes grounds to annul a marriage. Yet, all of them are violated by pulling an infant into this mystical marriage with the clergy by baptizing them as members of the clergy’s spouse, the church.      

Even if the hierarchy thinks the faithful enter this mystical union at Confirmation, it violates several Canons.  Regardless, let’s not get caught up in Canon Law.  After all, we all know how forgiving the hierarchy is when it comes to rules that don’t suit their interests. 

Let’s just play along and say we are validly married to the clergy because if we don’t, how can we take this nifty quiz the USCCB has called “Grade Your Marriage.”  What fun!  We can grade the hierarchy as our spouse…using the hierarchy’s very own standards for good marriages!  I’m sure they’d love for us to do this because they are huge advocates for strengthening marriages.  Therefore, I’m confident they want to strengthen their marriage with you, the people of God so as to set a good example.

The quiz asks each spouse to rate their partner on a scale of 1 to 10 in 15 areas.  I’ll relax the rules and permit a 0 to 10 scale, but please, no negative numbers no matter how tempted you may be.  The specific assessment areas are listed below.  Remember, you are to rate the church hierarchy as your spouse.  Therefore, I added some contextual description associated with the clergy / church marriage. 

1. Shared Values: How well do your and the clergy’s values and priorities align?
2. Commitment: How committed are the clergy to you?
3. Communication: How well does the hierarchy communicate with you?
4. Conflict Resolution: How skilled are clergy members at resolving conflicts with you?
5. Intimacy/Sexuality: Let’s ignore the sexual dimension on this one.  How much interpersonal intimacy do you have with the clergy?
6. Spirituality/Faith: How well do the hierarchy’s faith and spirituality align with and support yours?
7. Money Management: How satisfied are you with the clergy’s management of money?
8. Appreciation/Affection: How well does the clergy express appreciation towards you?
9. Lifestyle: How compatible is the clergy’s lifestyle with supporting your lifestyle needs?
10. Recreation: How satisfied are you with the leisure time you spend with clergy?
11. Decision Making: How satisfied are you with the hierarchy’s decision making practices?
12. Parenthood: How satisfied are you with the clergy’s parenting skills and support for raising your children?
13. Household chores / gender differences: Remember, no matter your gender, in this marriage, you are the female church.  How satisfied are you with the gender roles and division of labor between you and the hierarchy?
14. Careers: Is there adequate support from the clergy for your career?
15. Balancing Time: How well do the clergy balance time when it comes to their relationship with you?

The instructions say any assessment area rated at 8 or above is in good shape while anything in the 4-7 range is considered to be in a danger zone.  The instructions then say to total scores for all 15 assessment areas and declare any total score higher than 100 as being an “A” for the marriage overall. 

I can’t help noticing that if you scored your spouse an average of 6.66 out of 10 (66.66% or a “D” on most grading scales) on every single question (solidly in the “danger zone” for every question), that results in a total of 100 and an “A” for your marriage overall on the hierarchy’s scale.  Evidently in “bishop math” fifteen “D”s = one “A", a phenomenon closely related to Jesus’ loaves and fishes gig.

I will not influence your assessment by providing mine here.  I do hope you take the survey and discuss it with your hierarchical leaders.  If people send me their responses, I can tally them and provide stats in a subsequent blog article or send them to the USCCB.  However, based upon listening to people, I think the results will indicate the hierarchy needs some serious marriage counseling with their spouse.

Survey aside, I have a few other thoughts regarding the clergy’s marriage to the people of God.  What’s up with excommunication?  The hierarchy should never set aside their spouse via excommunication.  The official viewpoint is that excommunication is “medicinal” versus a “divorce” but, how many of you stop feeding your spouse if they disagree with you?  “…You don’t want my mother visiting???? I think you can bloody well go without any food until you change your mind.”  And how many of you consider withholding nourishment as an acceptable form of “medicine?”  “…You’re sick, dear?  No food for you until you’re healthy…it’s for your own good, honey.”  

Canon 1135 says there’s equality between marriage partners, but that isn’t the case when it comes to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is it?  In a healthy marriage, both parties make amends and forgive, recognizing they both err.  However, with the hierarchy, those of us constituting their wife are always the erring party, always the ones needing to confess, always the ones receiving penance, always the ones needing forgiveness…and from them.  “We’re equal, sweetie, it’s just that you’re always the one to screw up.  But don’t worry because I’m here to forgive you for all these screw ups.”  There are marriages like this where the husband is always right but they are typically categorized by one word, “abusive.”

Finally, what’s up with Canon Law calling me a “subject” if I’m married to the hierarchy?  Have you ever heard a wedding end with, “I now pronounce you man and subject?”  If Christ is king, then his bride is queen, not “subject.”  If the clergy fancy themselves princes, then we’re their princesses, not their “subjects.” 

Do you think the hierarchy is married to the people of God?  Do you think the marriage is healthy?  If not, do you think it can be saved?  What kind of marriage therapy might work?