Current Affairs – Page 3

Spokeswoman of Evil Speaks!

Recently we peered into The Mind Of Evil in an attempt to understand what the Obama administration was thinking when it imposed its draconian contraception requirement.

Now we get a little more insight into the Mind of Evil from evil spokeswoman herself, Kathleen Sebelius, who writes an editorial in USA Today with the preposterous title “Contraception rule respects religion.”

Let’s see what she has to say . . .

One of the key benefits of the 2010 health care law is that many preventive services are now free for most Americans with insurance. Vaccinations for children, cancer screenings for adults and wellness visits for seniors are all now covered in most plans with no expensive co-pays or deductibles. So is the full range of preventive health services recommended for women by the highly respected Institute of Medicine, including contraception.

I don’t know who the generically-named Institute of Medicine is. Perhaps their offices are located next door to the Superfriends’ generically-named Hall of Justice. However, the Institute of Medicine ain’t so highly respected by me if they’re recommending contraception for women as a preventive health service.

Children are not a disease, and they do not need to be prevented the way cancer or pneumonia do. While some women might have medical conditions that contraindicate pregnancy, that does not justify contraception as a means of avoiding it, and certainly the idea of recommending contraception to women in general is reflective of agenda rather than medicine.

Today, virtually all American women use contraception at some point in their lives.

This is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Virtually all women—and men—do stupid and immoral things at some point in their lives. That does not mean these things aren’t stupid and immoral.

And we have a large body of medical evidence showing it has significant benefits for their health, as well as the health of their children.

HUH?

What kind of Orwellian doublethink is this?

How does contraception—indiscriminately considered—improve the health of women or their children? The Pill, Norplant, IUD’s, condoms, etc. all work by different mechanisms and have different effects on the bodies of the people using them. The only effect they share in common is that they prevent pregnancy. If the claim is that avoiding pregnancy itself is a health benefit then it’s hard to see how that could benefit a woman’s children—since without pregnancy they wouldn’t exist. And as to health benefits to the mother, even if we set aside the idea that we’re dealing with junk science filtered through an anti-child, pro-loose-sex ideology, the same supposed benefits from not-being-pregnant can be achieved without contraception.

But birth control can also be quite expensive, costing an average of $600 a year, which puts it out of reach for many women whose health plans don’t cover it.

Well, the cost is going to depend entirely on what kind of contraception you are using. I haven’t checked the price of condoms, but unless nymphomania or satyriasis is involved, I imagine their use would not cost $600 a year.

Further, abstinence and NFP are free.

And nothing that the evil spokeswoman has said has established that contraception is a good thing or that it should be used.

The public health case for making sure insurance covers contraception is clear.

No. This is nonsense.

There is no “public health case” for making sure that insurance covers contraception because we haven’t even shown that widespread use of contraception is good or that it benefits public health. All we have are assertions without supporting evidence, and with no attention given to the moral character of the question.

Proceeding from the purely secular level, there is this fact: If people have easy access to avoiding pregnancy then a host of ills follow, including promiscuous, irresponsible sex, the treating of women as sex-objects, the juvenilizing of men, marital breakup, increased infertility, and the demographic winter caused by people having fewer children.

Even pagan Roman emperors like Augustus recognized that if you want a population to maintain itself, you can’t let it slide into declining birth rates. When this is a danger, people need to be incentivized to have more children (which Augustus did in a variety of ways). They should not be disincentivized by passing out free contraceptives!

And then there’s this: By passing out free contraceptives you create a false sense of security regarding pregnancy and thus encourage more promiscuous sex, but the very same attitude of irresponsibility leads to greater contraceptive failure (because the irresponsible don’t use the conception consistently and correctly), leading to more accidental pregnancies, leading to a greater number of abortions.

Since abortion kills a child, there is actually a negative impact on “public health” just due to the accidental-pregnancy-leading-to-abortion effect of contraception right there.

But we also recognize that many religious organizations have deeply held beliefs opposing the use of birth control.

At least your ideology has not so blinded you that you fail to recognize this.

That’s why in the rule we put forward, we specifically carved out from the policy religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith. This exemption includes churches and other houses of worship, and could also include other church-affiliated organizations.

Here we have half-truth and deception.

The preceding sentence noted that “many religious organizations” have “deeply held religious beliefs opposing the use of birth control.” Fine.

But the new sentence says that the policy exempts *not* those religious organizations that have such beliefs but rather “religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith.”

There is a difference between the two. If you really wanted to protect religious freedom you would exempt religious organizations on the basis of their belief, not what proportion of their employees share their faith.

And this is not the only restriction Sebelius fails to mention. The exemption also requires that the institutions primarily serve people who share their faith, which leaves out a huge number of schools, hospitals, charities, etc. It doesn’t matter how deeply held the beliefs of the organization are. If they reach out to more than a certain proportion of people who do not share their faith then they are required to violate their deeply held beliefs.

And the situation is worse than that! But let this suffice to show the game that Evil Spokeswoman is playing through her selective presentation of information.

In choosing this exemption, we looked first at state laws already in place across the country.

So what? States can make law for good or ill. That doesn’t say anything about what policies the executive branch of the federal government should implement. If a bunch of states have a particular law, that’s no reason to impose it by executive branch policy on a national basis. If a bunch of states required people to jump off bridges, should the executive branch impose that nationally?

Of the 28 states that currently require contraception to be covered by insurance, eight have no religious exemption at all.

So . . . barely more than half of the states require contraception to be covered by insurance . . . and of those who do less than a third have a policy that is worse than yours . . . and all told less than 20% of states employ this even worse policy . . . and this justifies your policy how?

The religious exemption in the administration’s rule is the same as the exemption in Oregon, New York and California.

Assuming this is true (do these states all, really, use identical wording in their laws?), the fact that you’ve got 6% of the states agreeing with you is not really a particularly strong argument for your case. Not if you’re basing it on a nose-count of what state policy is.

It’s important to note that our rule has no effect on the longstanding conscience clause protections for providers, which allow a Catholic doctor, for example, to refuse to write a prescription for contraception.

So Catholic doctors aren’t required to violate their conscience. Why, then, are Catholic hospital administrators and board members?

Nor does it affect an individual woman’s freedom to decide not to use birth control.

I am so relieved to hear that the Obama administration does not favor forcing contraceptive pills down women’s throats. Even China doesn’t do that (normally). It’s perfectly happy as long as you don’t get pregnant more than once. Abstinence and NFP are okay with them. They don’t actually force you to take the Pill if you’ve already had a child. It’s so wonderful that the Obama administration isn’t proposing a policy that would force women to use contraceptives. Adding this line to her editorial sure makes Sebelius’s case more convincing.

And the president and this administration continue to support existing conscience protections.

In some minimal, Orwellian, politically convenient sense, I’m sure this is true.

This is not an easy issue.

To the contrary: This is an extremely easy issue: DON’T MANDATE CONTRACEPTION COVERAGE AT ALL, AND IF YOU DO, DON’T REQUIRE RELIGIOUS ENTITIES LIKE SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS AND CHARITIES TO VIOLATE THEIR CONSCIENCES ON THIS POINT.

Only blind, inflexible ideology could make a simple issue like this appear hard.

But by carving out an exemption for religious organizations based on policies already in place, we are working to strike the right balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing women’s access to critical preventive health services.

Well, you failed to “strike the balance” this time.

Next time, try not to be so nakedly totalitarian in your approach. Try actually respecting the consciences of people in general instead of the most-narrowly-construed-class-you-think-you-can’t-politically-afford-to-subject-to-the-policy.

And don’t have the evil spokeswoman talk to us like we’re idiots, either.

Those are my thoughts.

What do you think?

Inside the Mind of Evil: Obama Administration’s HHS Decision

Under the headline “Contraceptive mandate could face tough sledding in Supreme Court” the LA Times is reporting:

The Supreme Court and the Obama administration, already headed for a face-off in March over the constitutionality of the healthcare law, appear to be on another collision course over whether church-run schools, universities, hospitals and charities must provide free contraceptives to their students and employees.

The dispute stems from one of the more popular parts of the new healthcare law: its requirement that all health plans provide “preventive services” for free. That category includes vaccines and such routine screenings as cholesterol checkups and mammograms. Starting this year, it also includes coverage of birth control pills, IUDs and other contraceptives.

Catholic leaders reacted fiercely when the administration announced in recent days that it would hold most religious institutions to that mandate, even those that have moral and religious objections to what some of their lawyers describe as “abortion-inducing drugs.”

Already two religious colleges have sued, and their cause got a major boost earlier this month from a unanimous Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded the definition of religious freedom.

Personally, I’m optimistic that this is going to get overturned. The policy is so bad that it’s only a question of who will reverse it. Several options spring to mind. Will it be the next Republican administration? The Supreme Court? Congress? The Obama administration itself?

This will not stand.

The policy is so bad, and so certain to be reversed, that I have difficulty understanding why the Obama administration would pursue it. The jackbooted, “jam it down your throat” approach that the Obama administration has taken in this is shocking. It’s a real, “What were they thinking?” situation.

I’m still trying to figure that out. Is this to be chalked up simply to incompetence (e.g., not realizing the kind of pushback this would create) or is it to be chalked up to conscious, deliberate evil—the same kind of disturbing, jackbooted, Orwellian authoritarianism that the Obama administration displayed in its bid to tell churches who they must hire as ministers (the case that the Supreme Court just slapped down 9-0). Or maybe it was a combination of incompetence and evil, with different members of the Obama administration displaying different degrees of those two vices.

Maybe they think that this would please the base in a way that would get the more votes.

Really?

I mean, if you’re already mandating free contraceptives for virtually the whole population then you’ve got about all the bounce from your base that you are going to get. Forcing Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities offer free contraceptives to those they provide insurance to is going to create a lot of bad press, and simply allowing a religious conscience exception for those institutions would allow you to have the same base bounce without the bad press. It’s impossible to see how you would get more votes out of this. By making yourselves look like jackbooted totalitarians you are going to get fewer votes—if for no other reason that you have revealed your naked antipathy to the Catholic faith and will make it all the more difficult for squishy Catholics to rationalize voting for you.

Sure, way too many Catholics accept contraception, but there’s a difference between not-agreeing-with-Church-teaching and wanting-to-see-one’s-Church-coerced-into-violating-its-teachings, and there’s certainly a difference between undertaking a policy that will allow squishy Catholics to continue to support you and forcing the leaders of their Church into a position where they will start actively campaigning against your policy.

The timing is even worse, with Pope Benedict ramping up religious liberty as a key concern, and focusing in particular on religious liberty in the United States by lighting a fire under the American bishops in the current series of ad limina talks.

This is just bad politics, and it will hurt them more than help them in the next election.

That’s no way to “Win The Future”!

If they understand that, then what is the reason behind the move?

I’ve heard some speculate that it’s part of a grand gambit to destroy Catholic healthcare in America by creating more and more lines Catholic hospitals will not cross, forcing them to either give up their Catholic identity or go out of business.

Or maybe it’s part of a one-presidential-term-used-to-achieve-maximum-societal-transformation-leading-to-a-secular-totalitarian-America plot.

Or maybe they think they’re doing some kind of too-clever-by-half thing of creating a policy that they know will be reversed but will still leave their larger goals in place (free contraceptives for almost everyone).

Frankly, I don’t know what they think that they’re doing.

They still need lots of pushback, though, so be sure to HEED THE U.S. BISHOPS’ URGENT ACTION ALERT (CLICK HERE).

In the meantime: What do you think they’re trying to do?

ADL: Jews Should Not Spit at Christians

I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Abe Foxman of the Jewish Antidefamation League (ADL), but I want to give him his props on a recent statement issued by the ADL.

According to a press release, issued December 7th,

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called on the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to publicly denounce the repulsive decades-old practice by ultra-Orthodox Jews of spitting at Christian clergymen they encounter in the street.

“This repulsive practice is a hateful act of persecution against another faith group and a desecration of God’s name according to Jewish law,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “This display of hate and bigotry has no place in Israel and is inimical to Jewish values of treating all people with respect and kindness.”

In a letter to Chief Rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger, ADL urged the rabbinical leaders to meet with Haredi leaders in an effort to end the practice and to join together to educate their community about having respect for coexistence with other faiths.

“The issue makes headlines every few years, and promises are made to combat it, but it continues every day,” said Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg, ADL Director of Interfaith Affairs. “We believe it is time for Israel’s religious leaders to stand up for the Jewish values of treating others with respect and kindness, and to put an end to this ugly phenomenon.”

Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Dov Pollock recently dismissed the indictment of a Greek Orthodox priest who punched a Haredi yeshiva student in the face after the student spat at him in Jerusalem’s Old City. Judge Pollock noted that this practice has been recurring for years, and that authorities have not been able to identify the perpetrators or to stop these acts.

What makes the ADL statement even more noteworthy is that there has been pushback (of a sort) and the ADL has remained firm. According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Hebrew, “The Land”),

The Anti-Defamation League has refused to accept the explanation by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate about its efforts to combat the phenomenon of Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at Christian clergymen in Jerusalem’s Old City. While the Rabbinate asserts the ADL is “misguided’ in publicly lashing out at the government institution for not doing enough to fight the phenomenon, the ADL is sticking to its assertions.

“We do not believe our statement was ‘misguided’ in the least. On the contrary, we believe the Rabbinate needed a wake-up call on this issue. We believe they have not done enough,” ADL chairman Abraham Foxman told Anglo File this week. “They’ve condemned it before, they’ve issued all of these statements, but nothing has changed.”

On the other hand,

Wiener called the ADL’s demands “misguided” and “particularly ironic” since “no Jewish institution has done more to fight the totally unacceptable phenomenon referred to than the Chief Rabbinate.” He asserted, “What the ADL calls on the Chief Rabbinate to denounce has been condemned by the Chief Rabbis publicly on more than one occasion.”

Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar also invited the Christian leadership to meet with them to express their “abhorrence” at the spitting and issued “a forceful call to all yeshivot and congregations in the Old City to make sure that no errant members of their institutions misguidedly engage in such practices,” he wrote.

Metzger paid “a solidarity visit” to the Christian patriarchs and met with the police and municipal authorities to encourage greater law enforcement, he added. Wiener also wrote that the situation has improved “dramatically” over the last few months.

Indeed, several Armenian and Orthodox clergymen told Haaretz that while still prevalent, spitting incidents have decreased recently.

I don’t know who is right in this dispute. It’s always easy to say that not enough has been done, and it’s always easy to deny this.

I can say that I’ve been in the Old City when affronts like this were committed—not spitting, but undue jostling of Christians (though I don’t know the religion of the jostlers).

I also can firmly get behind a “Can’t we all just not spit on each other?” campaign.

That’s not only offensive. It’s gross and unsanitary.

What do you think?

Will They Really Fix the Offensive John Paul II Statue?

So you know that UGLY statue of John Paul II they have outside Rome’s main train termnal?

You know, the one that looks like this . . . ?

I’ve blogged before about the UGLY John Paul II statue outside Rome’s main train terminal.

YOU CAN READ ABOUT THAT HERE.

Now Catholic New Agency is reporting that an effort is underway to fix it:

“I made a design for the sculpture that wasn’t executed well in the foundry,” explained the creator of the artwork, Italian sculptor Oliviero Rainaldi.

“It is not that we have come up with a new statue,” he told CNA on Jan. 10. “We’re correcting those details that weren’t executed well” so that “it will be more faithful to my original idea.”

The redesign will involve replacing the head, modifying the Pope’s cape and touching up the outer coating of paint, since the bronze has oxidized to a light shade of green. The statue will also be raised 15 inches on a new platform, and its lighting will be improved.

. . .

Rainaldi told CNA in a June 2011 interview that his avant garde design is intended to manifest the inner-life of Pope John Paul II, instead of presenting a life-like photographic image.

“The man within was more interesting to me than the man outside,” he said, describing a man who was “lacerated” inside “not only by his infirmity but also by his mission,” the sculptor said. Rainaldi added, “this man showed he was beautiful for others reasons beyond his appearance.”

GET THE STORY.

Color me skeptical, but it doesn’t sound to me like Rainaldi “gets it.”

If you want to make a John Paul II memorial homeless person shelter then make a homeless person shelter and slap a sign on it. Don’t make something that positively invites an internet caption contest.

Speaking of which . . . how would you caption this monstrosity?

Should Catholic Sex Abuse Documents Be Withheld from Courts?

That’s a very good question, isn’t it?

How many times during the course of various sex abuse news cycles have we read about lawyers using various legal maneuvers to try to keep official, confidential documents pertaining to priestly sex abuses cases out of the hands of courts?

These instances only reveal what scoundrels both the lawyers are—*and* their clients. I mean, the *only* reason to try to keep a document out of the court’s hands is if you have something to hide, and that shows that you are acting in bad faith, trying to stop justice from being done.

Consider this story on the web site of the National Catholic Reporter (*not* Register):

SNAP director may be forced to testify in abuse case

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The leading advocacy group for child victims of clergy sex abuse may be compelled to turn over 23 years of internal documents, correspondence and email to the attorneys of an accused priest unless Missouri state courts act to quash a court-ordered deposition.

David Clohessy, head of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, has been ordered to appear for deposition in a county court case involving allegations of sexual misconduct against Kansas City diocesan priest Fr. Michael Tierney.

Victims’ advocates say if Clohessy is compelled to appear, it could have wide-ranging impact on the ability of victims of clergy sex abuse to identify their accusers and tell their stories without revealing their names in public.

A law professor noted for her decades of work with clergy sex abuse victims said the “end result” of Clohessy’s deposition would be “a huge chilling effect on helping child sex abuse victims at every stage.”

Also at stake is the confidentiality of emails between reporters and victims’ advocates that may reveal sensitive information and names of sources. In a court filing, the Missouri Press Association said Clohessy’s deposition would “eviscerate the free-press guarantee” of journalists.

Clohessy has been ordered to turn over all documents and correspondence, including emails, from SNAP’s files referring to Tierney or the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese. He is also ordered to submit all documents containing references to either Tierney or the diocese from:

Press releases or press release drafts;

* Correspondence with members of the press;

* Correspondence with the lawyer representing the alleged abuse victim;

* Correspondence with members of the public.

* Clohessy has also been ordered to submit:

* Any documents or correspondence that “mention or refer to any priest currently or formerly” associated with the diocese;

* Any correspondence with the victim named in the lawsuit;

* Any correspondence from members of the public “that discuss or relates to repressed memory.”

According to court filings, defense lawyers for priests and former priests named in six other sex abuse lawsuits have requested to “cross-notice” Clohessy’s deposition in order to have access to his testimony.

Court records indicate that Clohessy and his group first attempted to quash the deposition by filing motions with Jackson County, Mo., Circuit Court Judge Ann Mesle, citing concerns of confidentiality for sex abuse victims and the rights of freedom of speech and assembly.

The records indicate Mesle overruled those concerns yesterday (Dec. 28), ordering Clohessy to submit himself for deposition Monday (Jan. 2).

Clohessy and his group appealed yesterday (Dec. 28) to Missouri’s Court of Appeals for the state’s Western District to try to quash the order. That appeal, court records indicate, was denied today (Dec. 29).

Following the denial by the appeals court, Clohessy’s lawyer said he and his client are “going to take every legal option we can” to prevent the deposition and are investigating filing for review with the Missouri Supreme Court.

Tierney’s lawyers first made the request for a deposition in November. They subpoenaed Clohessy, requesting him to testify regarding his knowledge of a lawsuit filed against Tierney on behalf of an abuse victim in September 2010.

Court filings indicate that the subpoena came after defense lawyers were concerned that a party in the suit may have violated an August 2011 gag order from Mesle by revealing some information to SNAP that was included in one of the group’s press releases.

READ THE FULL STORY.

Let me begin by making three observations:

1) Priestly sex abuse is an abomination against God and man, there are no excuses for it, and the most vigorous legal and ecclesiastical means must be used to root it out and purify both the Church and broader society (where it is as just as big a problem).

2) I have no idea what the legal merits of the motion of SNAP’s lawyers are. They may be right on the money, legally speaking—or not.

3) Regardless of the legal merits, I have no idea whether the deposition and document disclosure would be a good thing. It might be—or not.

Prescinding from those points, allow me to focus on what I consider to be a broader lesson that can be learned from this story.

Basically, regardless of the legal or practical merits of SNAP’s attempt to quash the handover of the documents, my reaction is not sympathetic.

Judging by the way it conducts itself in public, SNAP appears to be a venomous group that approaches the sex abuse scandal in an unconstructive way. They are consistently shrill, sensationalist, dogmatic, and one-sided in their approach. They fail to approach the issue with the seriousness it deserves—a seriousness that involves more than displaying righteous indignation at every opportunity. Obtaining justice means more than taking a purely one-sided view of things. If one is to avoid a destructive and unjust witch hunt, one has to be prepared to acknowledge and take seriously the fact that there is more than one side to every dispute. SNAP doesn’t convey the impression that it “gets” that fact. It neither displays proper sensitivity to the fact that not all allegations of misdoing are true nor does it properly credit steps the Catholic Church has taken to address the scandal (including, especially, steps taken by Pope Benedict, both before and after his election to the papacy).

At least not in my experience.

It would seem, from this latest incident, that I may have to add a new element to my appraisal of how SNAP behaves in public: It may also be hypocritical.

Haven’t these very same people been decrying with righteous indignation attempts by Church authorities to withhold certain records from the legal process? Haven’t we been told that these efforts displayed the Church’s bad faith, and the only reason they might have to withhold them was to cover up patterns of systematic scandalous and criminal behavior?

Matters seem different when the shoe is on the other foot, however, don’t they?

Suddenly it seems that there can be all kinds of good reasons not to have your personal files gone through by attorneys acting in an adversarial capacity (which is the way our justice system works in this country).

I’m quite sure that victims of sexual abuse whose names appear in SNAP documents might not want them revealed. But you know what? I bet abuse victims whose names appear in diocesan documents also might not want their names revealed. If protecting victim confidentiality is a reason to limit the ability of courts to probe SNAP’s documents, it’s equally a reason to protecting the confidentiality of victims who contacted dioceses.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

That’s justice.

And that’s just to name one legitimate reason to potentially withhold or censor documents.

So the broader lesson I want to point to is that we shouldn’t take any attempt to withhold documents as automatically an indication of bad faith or a “coverup”—either on SNAP’s part or on the part of a particular diocese or, for that matter, the Vatican.

Maybe SNAP will remember that the next time those they criticize make precisely the same kind of motions they themselves are making at this moment—and maybe they’ll show a little more understanding in their public statements.

Or maybe they won’t.

What do you think?

Archbishop Chaput’s Stunning Letter to Philadelphia

On December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Archbishop Charles Chaput, the newly-installed archbishop of Philadelphia, released a pastoral letter to the faithful of his archdiocese. It will be read this weekend at Masses, even as Archbishop Chaput is returning home from his ad limina visit to Rome.

A copy of the letter was obtained by Whispers in the Loggia and has now been published online.

Pastoral letters from bishops can range from being “ho-hum” letters to being “Wham!” letters. Archbishop Chaput’s is definitely at the “Wham!” end of the spectrum.

Let’s read it together.

The letter begins with the kind of gentle, winning tone that one would expect in a pastoral letter from a newly-installed bishop:

December 8, 2011
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Dear friends in Christ,

Exactly three months ago, on September 8, I was installed as Archbishop of Philadelphia. In the weeks since, traveling the archdiocese, I’ve been struck by two things I encounter again and again: the reservoir of good will in our people, and the fidelity of our priests.

The Church in Southeastern Pennsylvania has deep roots and an extraordinary legacy of saints, service and public witness. These are profound strengths, built by the faith of generations of Catholic families. But all of these good facts depend on our willingness to sustain them by our actions in the present. Advent is a season of self-examination in the light of God’s word; a season of conversion and looking forward in hope to the birth of a Savior at Christmas. There is no better time to speak frankly about the conditions we now face as a community of believers.

So far the letter has the kind of tone that might set one up for a “ho-hum” pastoral letter. But now it pivots—suddently and dramatically—and signals an entirely new direction:

Complacency is the enemy of faith.

The word “enemy” immediately sends up a warning flag.

To whatever degree complacency and pride once had a home in our local Church, events in the coming year will burn them out.

Wow!

“Events in the coming year will burn them out.” Intense!

And now, perhaps, a word of reassurance?

The process will be painful.

Oh-kaaay. No reassurance just yet.

After three “Wham!” sentences in a row, we do finally get a ray of hope:

But going through it is the only way to renew the witness of the Church; to clear away the debris of human failure from the beauty of God’s word and to restore the joy and zeal of our Catholic discipleship.

Even though we finally get to words like “beauty” and “joy,” first we get “only way” and “clear away the debris of human failure.”

So, for those of us who aren’t in Philadelphia and may not have been closely following events there, what kind of incendiary “events in the coming year” are we talking about?

In the year ahead, we have a grave and continuing obligation to help victims of clergy sex abuse to heal; to create Church environments that protect our young people; and to cooperate appropriately with civil authorities in pursuing justice for both the victims of sexual abuse and those accused.

Right. Philadelphia is one of those places that has had re-eruptions of the clerical sexual abuse scandal that first took hold of the national scene in 2002. Since then there were flareups in Philadelphia with grand juries in 2005 and 2011.

According to Wikipedia (and please note that Wikipedia is scarcely a strictly objective source; it shares the viewpoints, for good or ill, of those who most aggressively contribute to it):

A second grand jury, in February, 2011, accused the Philadelphia archdiocese, still under Cardinal Rigali, of failing to stop the sexual abuse of children more than five years after the first grand jury report had documented abuse by more than 50 priests.[12] The 2011 grand jury report said that as many as 37 priests were credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors. Rigali initially said in February “there were no active priests with substantiated allegations against them, but six days later, he placed three of the priests, whose activities had been described in detail by the grand jury, on administrative leave. He also hired an outside lawyer, Gina Maisto Smith, a former assistant district attorney who prosecuted child sexual assault cases for 15 years, to re-examine all cases involving priests in active ministry and review the procedures employed by the archdiocese.” Three weeks later, most of those 37 priests remain active in the ministry. Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country, said “[T]he headline is that in Philadelphia, the system is still broke.’ David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton, said, ‘The situation in Philadelphia is “Boston reborn.”’”[13]

The previous archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, had reached retirement age in 2010 and submitted his resignation at that time, though as often happens, it was not immediately accepted by Pope Benedict. Wikipedia reports:

In July, 2011, Rigali’s resignation was accepted by the Vatican. He “offered an apology ‘if I have offended’ and ‘for any weaknesses on my part,’ but said he saw no particular connection between the timing of the Vatican accepting his resignation and turbulence” over the February grand jury report. Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput will succeed Rigali.[20]

So this forms part of the background to the events Archbishop Chaput is discussing in his pastoral letter.

What does he want us to know about the present and coming situation?

At the same time, we need to remember that many hundreds of our priests—the overwhelming majority—have served our people with exceptional lives of sacrifice and character. Since arriving in September, I have pressed for a rapid resolution of the cases of those priests placed on administrative leave earlier this year. The first months of 2012 will finally see those cases concluded. Whatever the results, the confidence of our people and the morale of our priests have suffered. The hard truth is that many innocent priests have borne the brunt of the Church’s public humiliation and our people’s anger. The harsh media environment likely to surround the criminal trial which begins next March will further burden our lay people and our clergy. But it cannot be avoided.

So the forecast is mixed but grim. We’ve got some cases of accused priests that are unresolved but that should be resolved early next year, which—whatever happens—will not please everybody and thus create some public controversy. And then we’ve got a criminal trial coming up.

Surely this is all of the bad news, though, right? Once we get the priestly sex abuse stuff out of the way it should be smooth sailing.

Finally, the resources of the Church do not belong to the bishops or the clergy; they belong to the entire Catholic people, including the faithful generations who came before us. The Church is a community of faith alive in the present but also connected across the years through time. The Church holds her resources in stewardship for the whole Catholic community, to carry out our shared apostolic mission as believers in Jesus Christ. This means that as archbishop, I have the duty not just to defend those limited resources, but also to ensure that the Church uses them with maximum care and prudence; to maximum effect; and with proper reporting and accountability.

Now the other shoe starts to drop.

In the coming year we will face very serious financial and organizational issues that cannot be delayed. They must be addressed. These are not simply business issues; they go to the heart of our ability to carry out our Catholic ministries.

Okay. So who gets the bad news?

The archdiocese remains strongly committed to the work of Catholic education.

It’s the schools. Some schools are going to be closed.

Are we sure, though, that these schools really must be closed? That there is no way to keep them open?

But that mission is badly served by trying to sustain unsustainable schools. In January, the archdiocesan Blue Ribbon Commission will provide me with its recommendations on Catholic education. The Commission has worked for months on this difficult issue with extraordinary sensitivity and skill. It will likely counsel that some, and perhaps many, schools must close or combine. It will also offer a framework for strengthening our schools going forward.

Undoubtedly, this will be disappointing news for those who children are in those schools and who may have made important decisions—like where to buy a house (which are not all that easy to get shed of in the current housing market)—based on the location of those schools. On the other hand, sustaining the unsustainable is not a good idea. If something can’t go on indefinitely, it won’t, and dioceses really do have to make painful prudential judgments on such matters. The involvement of a commission shows that there is an attempt at broader consultation so that the decisions are made in the best manner possible, taking into account a broader range of factors and viewpoints.

Is that all the bad news?

Over the next 18 months the same careful scrutiny must be applied to every aspect of our common life as a Church, from the number and location of our parishes, to every one of our archdiocesan operational budgets. This honest scrutiny can be painful, because real change is rarely easy; but it also restores life and health, and serves the work of God’s people. We cannot call ourselves good stewards if we do otherwise.

So parish closings and broader budget cuts are on the table as well.

That’s a pretty sobering message.

These words may sound sobering, but they are spoken with love as a father and a brother.

This is a good touch, both rhetorically and—more important—pastorally. Unless he has made a recording of his own reading of the letter (something I have no indication that he’s done) then the letter will be read out loud by people in the parishes, some of the very people who may be most concerned or distressed about the forthcoming changes. Given the dramatic nature of the letter’s contents, the tone of voice or body language of the readers could skew its perception by the congregation. By putting in the text of the letter itself a description of the intended tone—“spoken with love as a father and a brother”—the archbishop signals both to the readers and to the hearers the impression he is trying to convey.

Good! That will help the letter’s reception.

He continues:

They [these words] are a plea to take our baptism seriously; and to renew our local Church with Christian charity, justice and zeal. As Scripture reminds us so frequently: Do not be afraid. God uses poor clay to create grandeur and beauty. He can certainly use us to renew and advance the work of the Church—and he will.

On this great feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, may God grant you and those you love a holy Advent; and lift your hearts; and make you ready for the joy of Christ’s birth. And please pray for me, as I pray for all of you and your families every day.

Gratefully yours in Jesus Christ,
Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Philadelphia

So there you have it.

Definitely a “Wham!” letter as far as pastoral letters go. I can easily imagine parishioners hearing this letter being stunned. In this post I’ve tried to put myself inside the head of a Philadelphia Catholic hearing this letter for the first time, imagining what my questions and reactions would be. As an outside observer, though, as someone not directly affected by the coming events in Philadelphia, my perspective will be somewhat different, and I can imagine many parishioners have a much more intense and unpleasant reaction.

For those who have such an intense reaction, I would say this: Give the Archbishop the benefit of the doubt. Give him a shot. He’s saying some unpleasant things, but in one way or another, they need to be said. Could he have said them better? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. But we shouldn’t quibble about tone or phrasing.

The fact is that he’s agreed to take on a very difficult pastoral assignment, and there are a number of things he needs to do. One of them is demonstrate that he has a clear-eyed, realistic appraisal of the situation. That he has done quite clearly.

He also needs to show that he’s a straight-shooter who will take effective action. He’s communicated that message, too.

One of the reasons that he needs to communicate that message is that there is a perception on the part of some in Philadelphia—fairly or unfairly—that Cardinal Rigali did not take effective action on the sex abuse crisis. Regardless of the merits or demerits of that charge, Archbishop Chaput needs to counter it for pastoral reasons, to show that he will take effective action.

In fact, it was in significant measure a desire on the part of bishops not to confront the sex abuse problem for so long that allowed it to grow to the proportions it did and cause the enormous amount of suffering it has.

Frankly, we need more bishops willing to confront painful issues.

Did he need to take on the subject of the schools, of possible parish closing and budget cuts?

This is a judgment call. Sometimes when there is bad news it is better to get it all out at once. Other times a step-by-step approach is better. It’s hard to say which is better in a particular case, and so here I’d urge giving Archbishop Chaput the benefit of the doubt.

I can say that I admire and am impressed by his willingness to confront these issues in as straightforward a way as he does, and by his efforts to communicate this information in a way that displays pastoral sensitivity and directs his flock’s attention to the higher goals and the good that can come from this painful period of renewal.

What do you think?

Secret, Closed-Door Vatican Smackdown?

Back on November 10, well-respected Vaticanista Sandro Magister reported:

Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller summit convened in the secretariat of state was doing damage control on the latest of many moments of confusion in the Roman curia.

In the hot seat was the document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the pontifical council for justice and peace. A document that had disturbed many, inside and outside of the Vatican.

The secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last moment. And precisely for this reason he had called that meeting in the secretariat of state.

The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on, nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized by the secretariat of state.

The PCJP document was indeed a subject of controversy. For example, some, such as the astute Mark Brumley, pointed out the difficulties that would be involved in implementing its proposals.

In anticipation of and in response to the controversy, I tried to provide some perspective to help people situate it in the overall scheme of things, including whether or not it represented an act of the Magisterium.

Magister’s piece on the document was widely hailed in the blogosphere and viewed as an indication that the document had caused a secret, closed-door Vatican smackdown.

I thought about blogging on the topic at the time, but I wanted to wait and see how the story matured.

Sandro Magister is a well-respected Vaticanista, and I always take what he has to say seriously, but it’s notoriously difficult to get accurate behind-the-scenes information on what’s going on at the Vatican, particularly in the fever swamp of Italian journalism. (N.B. ours is even worse when it comes to getting Vatican stories right!)

I wasn’t surprised, then, when John Thavis of Catholic News Service, provided a different take on the story, writing:

Then in mid-November, an Italian blogger reported that the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had been blindsided by the text and had ordered that, from now on, all such documents must have the prior approval of his office.

Wait. Actually, I was surprised by that. “An Italian blogger?” I have great respect for bloggers (I am one), but Magister’s accomplishments go beyond merely having a WordPress account. He’s a well-respected Vaticanista. (Did I mention he’s a well-respected Vaticanista?)

And what’s with this referring to an individual public source but not giving his name? That’s just bad journalism—especially in the Internet age, when people expect not just the name of the person you’re responding to but a link directly to the piece you’re responding to. Even if Catholic News Service policy prohibits links in online stories for some foolish reason, you should at least give the name of the person you’re responding to so people can Google him, see what he said, and make up their own minds what the merits of his account versus yours are.

It’s one thing to grant anonymity to a non-public source (Magister did that, and I don’t blame Thavis for it, either), but when you’re responding to someone who has put his remarks on the public record, not giving his name is wrong.

“An Italian blogger” is wholly inadequate.

But on with the story. According to Thavis:

The real back story was far different, according to informed sources. Months ago, in view of the upcoming G-20 meeting in France Nov. 3-4, Vatican officials discussed how to make a contribution to the discussion on international monetary reform.

Three years earlier, the Vatican had been invited to a U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Financing for Development in Qatar, and the Vatican delegation had published a position paper on financial abuses. That paper was prepared by the justice and peace council, but it was presented as an official statement of the Holy See.

This year, however, because the Vatican is not a member of the G-20 and had not been invited to its meeting, Vatican officials decided that a statement on financial reform should come in the form of a “note” by the justice and peace council, rather than a formal statement of the Holy See.

The important thing was that the council’s members and consultants worked with the Secretariat of State throughout the drafting process. The “Second Section” of the Secretariat of State, which deals with foreign affairs, not only discussed the document’s approach but reviewed and “adjusted” its content before publication, sources said.

So the idea that Cardinal Peter Turkson’s justice and peace council had pulled a fast one on Vatican higher-ups was baseless. But the story got legs because of a misunderstanding that occurred about the same time.

Every year, Pope Benedict XVI—like his predecessor—issues a message for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees. The message is prepared by the pontifical council that deals with migration issues, and receives final approval by the Secretariat of State.

This year, however, extensive excerpts of the pope’s migration message were inadvertently published five days early on the website of the Vatican Information Service. The text was removed after several hours, but there was enough embarrassment to prompt action by Cardinal Bertone. He issued instructions that all documents bearing the pope’s signature must be released through the Secretariat of State, and not circulated ahead of time by other Vatican agencies.

That led some to mistakenly conclude that Cardinal Bertone was reacting to the document on financial reform, and reining in radical Roman Curia elements at the justice and peace council. On the contrary, Vatican sources said, no document on sensitive global economic issues would ever be published without the “nulla osta” of the Secretariat of State.

Thavis’s story, like Bertone’s, is based on anonymous sources, which is par for the course at the Vatican (and, these days, seemingly everywhere). It thus provides an interesting counter-portrait, though one should be aware that Thavis’s anonymous sources are not necessarily any more reliable than Magister’s. And they may both have distinct spins they want put on the basic facts.

For example, Thavis states that the idea that the PCJP had “pulled a fast one on Vatican higher-ups” was unsubstantiated. But did Magister claim that a “fast one” had been pulled?

What he said was that Bertone “complained that he had not known about it until the last moment.” That’s not saying that the PCJP was responsible for this or that it tried to pull a fast one. They may well, as Thavis states, have been in touch with the Secretariate of State all along and yet, for whatever reason, Bertone did not learn of the document until relatively late in the game—at least late enough that he wished he had known about it earlier.

So I’m not seeing Thavis’s facts and Magister’s facts as conflicting on this point.

That being said, do they conflict on others? Would Magister revise his account in any way in light of further developments?

In his latest piece, Magister writes:

With respect what www.chiesa originally reported, it should be noted that the requirement of advance review by the secretariat of state applies exclusively to texts that bear the signature of the pope, and not to those simply signed by the heads of one of the offices of the Roman curia.

The memo therefore cannot refer, strictly speaking, to the document from the pontifical council for justice and peace presented at the Vatican press office on October 24, entitled “Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority.” A document not signed by Benedict XVI, but only by the heads of that dicastery.

It is likely, instead – as reported by the agency of the United States bishops, “Catholic News Service,” in an article on November 17 – that the memo in question was prompted by a mishap that took place with Benedict XVI’s message for the 98th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, presented at the Vatican press office on October 25.

In effect, large sections of this pontifical document had been released by the “Vatican Information Service,” the online agency of the Holy See, five days before the date set for its publication.

This does not change the fact that at the summit held at the secretariat of state on November 4, to address such incidents, there was also talk of the document on the international financial system issued autonomously by the pontifical council for justice and peace, the object of strong criticism after its publication, inside and outside of the Vatican.

From this summit came the authoritative statement from the archbishop substitute, who in the Vatican chain of command comes right after the pope and the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

So it seems like Magister is in part modifying his original story but in part sticking with it.

He then does what so few news sources do, and for which he deserves much applause, which is to reprint the actual document he’s talking about—the memo that came out of the Secretariate of State’s meeting.

I’ve always been a believer in showing what the actual documents say, as it allows people to make up their own minds in a much more informed way than if they aren’t simply relying on somebody’s summary of an unseen text.

So be sure and check out Magister’s latest post for the text of the document.

It makes for a fascinating glimpse into inner workings of the world of Vatican documents.

What do you think?

The Four Liturgists of the Apocalypse

The Register recently asked me to do a post on what I saw at Mass this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday using the new translation of the Roman Missal.

Happy to oblige! So here’s what happened . . .

I arrived at Mass a few minutes early and took my seat in the pew. The particular parish I was attending had not done a lot of prep work for the new translation.

In fact, I saw that the Roman Missal they had was still in its shiny, new shrinkwrap.

And behold, there were seven seals upon its shrinkwrap.

I heard the cantor proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the Missal and break its seals?”

And no one in the parish was able to open the Missal or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was able to open the Missal, for I was really looking forward to the new translation.

Then the pastor said, “Weep not. This will only take a moment.”

And when the pastor opened one of the seven seals, I heard one of the four living choir members say, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and its rider was a liturgist; and a crown was given to her, and she went out conquering and to conquer.

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living choir member say, “Come!”

And out came another horse, bright red; its liturgist was permitted to take peace from the parish, so that people should form factions and grumble against one another; and she was given a great sword.

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living choir member say, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its liturgist had a set of political talking points in her hand; and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living choir members saying, “A dearth of jobs in the economy; but do not harm the taxes or the new medical care program!”

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living choir member say, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a green horse, and its rider’s name was Envy, and Bitterness followed her.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of the parishioners who had been slain for complaining about liturgical abuses and for the witness they had borne.

They cried out with a loud voice, “How long must we suffer this squishy, 1970s translation?”

Then they were each given a white choir robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow parishioners and their brethren and sistren should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as when the California eucalyptus tree sheds its sap all over your car, which you have parked under it in the parking lot, because that was the only space there was.

And when the pastor opened the seventh seal, there was silence in the parish for about half an hour, and no one was able to speak a word.

For it turned out that the liturgists were right! The new translation was entirely “unproclaimable”!

And then the world ended.

-ish.

Okay, actually it didn’t.

Here’s what really happened . . .

At the beginning of Mass the pastor said, in a very kind and gentle tone of voice:

“Today we begin using a new translation of the Roman Missal. We’re going to go slow and easy. There’s no brownie points for getting everything correct, and there’s no demerits for getting a few things wrong. We’re staying pretty much with the same Eucharistic Prayers and the same responses at all the Masses until we get used to them all.”

And then we did the Penitential Rite and nobody keeled over from a heart attack.

When the homily came, the pastor preached about the readings and about how Advent is a time of waiting for God, in contrast to the constant demands for immediate gratification that echo through our society, particularly with the commercialism that affects the pre-Christmas season.

He didn’t mention the new translation at all.

When we said the Profession of Faith, many people were going by memory and started to say the old version, but the pastor stepped close to the microphone and proclaimed the new version in a firm and confident tone, and people started looking at their pew card and reading the new one.

People also tended to reflexively say, “And also with you,” when the priest said, “The Lord be with you,” but the reflex will get retuned in short order.

All in all, the whole thing happened very smoothly. People made a few mistakes out of habit, but no big deal.

I also saw a lot of people looking at their pew cards in a way that suggested they were really interested in them.

So interested, in fact, that they might take them home with them. I was tempted to do that myself.

It was no surprise, then, that the only other mention that was made of the new translation was right at the end of Mass, when the pastor was doing the announcements and politely asked people not to take the pew cards home with them but to leave them in the pew because the people at other Masses would be needing to use them.

And that was it!

No fuss, no muss (whatever muss is). The world didn’t end. People did not begin a wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was went fine.

I was totally jazzed.

But how about you? What do you think? How did Mass go in your parish?

Sinead O’Connor Laughs Off Pope-Killing Fantasies, Blames Own Twitter Followers

According to FOX News:

Irish songstress Sinead O’Connor came under fire a few weeks ago when she took to Twitter to announce that she would perform a “bloodbath” if Pope Benedict XVI visited Ireland.

“Young people of Ireland I love u’ said Sinead as she pulled the [f**king] trigger,” the artist tweeted, referencing the famous words of John Paul II, which he uttered in his 1979 pilgrimage to Ireland.

Okay, the offense meter just maxed out the scale.

But O’Connor is changing her tune, insisting that her words were all in innocent humor.

I’ll bet she is. I’ve got one word for you, Sinead: “NOT FUNNY.”

“That was just nonsense. Come on! See, that’s the trouble with Twitter, you know, people take it too seriously and they say, ‘Oh, you’re looking for attention,’ . . .

Ding! Ding! Ding!

. . . but it’s them following you and you didn’t ask them to follow you,” she told FOX411’S Pop Tarts column at amfAR’s Inspiration Gala Los Angeles, a celebration of men’s style, to benefit the Foundation’s AIDS research programs.

So . . . O’Connor is blaming her own Twitter followers for being concerned about her publicly expressing fantasies about killing the pope?

What’s with this “I didn’t ask them to follow me on Twitter” schtick? You’re a pop celeb. You create a Twitter account. You say stuff on it. You’re kinda inviting people to follow you. This is Publicity 101 in the 21st century.

“So it just got to a joke between me and my mate … I was joking about how I’d meet him at the airport with my AK but obviously I wouldn’t or couldn’t.”

Oh, of course. That explains it then. Everyone publicly jokes with their pals about murdering prominent world leaders at airports with AK-47s and creating a “bloodbath,” right? No reason anybody would think there was anything amiss there.

Yet, this isn’t the first time the outspoken rocker who has vented her ill feelings towards the Pope and openly criticized the Catholic church over its sex abuses cases involving the clergy. In 1992 she sparked outrage on “SNL” following an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II with the proclamation: “Fight the real enemy!”

Yeah, I remember that.

In recent months, O’Connor has also raised eyebrows with several odd remarks on her personal blog and on Twitter – ranging from her suicidal thoughts to her desperate need for a sexual partner.

Violent gun fantasies coupled with suicidal thoughts aren’t going to help one get a sexual partner—marital or otherwise.

Miss O’Connor needs serious help.

O’Connor did, however, recently delete her Twitter account.

That’s actually a good start. Stop ideating these things in public and GET HELP.

“It was quite tiring keeping up with it really,” she explained. “I had great fun though, but all things must pass. I might start it up again, you never know.”

Right.

Interestingly, the FOX News piece didn’t mention the fact that Sinead O’Connor had herself ordained as a woman priest back in the 1990s.

MORE.

What a mess.

What do you think?

Supreme Court to Decide Issue of Women Priests?

That’s what could happen on a legal theory articulated by the Obama administration—and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were quick to pick up on the fact.

The case at hand involves a Lutheran minister, but the principles potentially apply to the issue of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church.

Specifically, the case involves a woman who served in a teaching capacity that her Lutheran body considers ministerial. Problems arose with her position because she suffers from narcolepsy, and she threatened to file a complaint with the state under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was then let go because the Lutheran body she works for holds that an in-house dispute resolution process should have been used rather than involving the state.

They apparently have a fairly strict interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, where St. Paul warns against lawsuits among believers, saying that such disputes should be settled within the Christian community rather than using the secular courts because of the scandal this creates. The Catholic Church recognizes the principles used in this passage but would apply them within a larger, natural law framework that would not result in an absolute prohibition. The scandal caused by Christians suing each other in secular court in a country like America today is not nearly the same as it would have been in St. Paul’s day, when Christians were a tiny minority. Operating in a “Scripture only” manner that does not have the same natural law heritage, however, it’s easy to see how a Lutheran group might take St. Paul as being more absolute than he is.

Whatever one may think of the group’s view regarding dispute resolution and going to court, it seems like this is precisely the kind of thing that the First Amendment would protect. The federal government should not be in the business of telling churches who they must or must not have as ministers. Such an intervention would violate the free exercise of religion.

Right?

Not according to the Obama administration.

FROM CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY/EWTN NEWS:

“The (Obama) administration has taken a very extreme position,” said Becket Fund Legal Counsel Luke Goodrich, who is leading the religious freedom group’s work on the Hosanna-Tabor case. He said the administration was “attacking the very existence of the ministerial exception,” such that “even the pastor of a church could sue the church for employment discrimination.”

“There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the outcome of this case,” Goodrich told CNA/EWTN News Oct. 3, “because the Supreme Court has not decided a case involving the autonomy of religious groups in many years.”

The Justice Department holds that the Lutherans cannot fire Perich for complaining to the government even if church teaching forbids it.

And it was this question – when might the government’s interest in preventing discrimination trump a religious group’s principles? – that prompted the justices to ask the attorney for the government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during Oct. 5 oral arguments why female priests could not be mandated by the government on similar grounds.

The justices were quick during oral arguments to apply the principles the Obama administration was proposing to the Catholic Church’s teaching that only baptized men can be validly ordained to the priesthood:

“The belief of the Catholic Church that priests should be male only – you do defer to that, even if the Lutherans say, look, our dispute resolution belief is just as important to a Lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a Catholic?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts, questioning Leodra Kruger, the U.S. solicitor general’s assistant who represented the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

“Yes,” Kruger responded. “But that’s because the balance of relative public and private interests is different in each case.”

That right there should send chills up your spine. Whenever a public official starts talking about the relative balance of public and private “interests” the public (i.e., government) “interests” tend to win out in the end. It may take a generation, but once the precedent is set that it’s a question of how government vs. non-government “interests” get balanced, the government finds a way—based on changing mores and social standards or whatever—to impose its own interests as the expense of non-government entities.

“Do you believe, Miss Kruger, that a church has a right that’s grounded in the Free Exercise Clause and/or the Establishment Clause to institutional autonomy with respect to its employees?” asked Justice Elena Kagan.

“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” the federal government’s attorney replied.

Kruger also said the ministerial exception to discrimination laws was not simply a part of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the “free exercise of religion.”

So according to the Obama administration a church does not have a First Amendment right to determine who its ministers will be.

Justice Scalia then pressed Kruger on the difference between ordinary “associations” – subject to a range of anti-discrimination laws – and religious ones.

“There is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly prohibits the government from mucking around in a labor organization,” said Justice Scalia, “but there, black on white in the text of the Constitution are special protections for religion. And you say that makes no difference?”

Kruger’s response included her explanation of what the government considers “the core of the ministerial exception as it was originally conceived … which is that there are certain relationships within a religious community that are so fundamental, so private and ecclesiastical in nature, that it will take an extraordinarily compelling governmental interest to (allow) just interference.”

Go, Antonin! This is the very reason we have freedom of religion protection in the First Amendment to begin with—to draw a bright line that the government must not cross.

But Justice Breyer pushed the federal government’s attorney to say how far she believed the protection extended.

“Suppose you have a religion and the central tenet is: ‘You have a problem with what we do, go to the synod; don’t go to court,’” he asked. “So would that not be protected by the First Amendment?”

“It’s not protected,” Kruger responded.

So, according to the Obama administration, the Obama administration gets to decide on the applicability of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 to an employment dispute?

The government attorney went on to attack Hosanna-Tabor’s use of the ministerial exception, which she said would mean “ that the hiring and firing decisions with respect to parochial school teachers and with respect to priests is categorically off limits” to federal regulators.

And this would be bad . . . how? Note in particular that she objected to the idea that “the hiring and firing decisions with respect to . . . priests is categorically off limits.” So the Obama administration thinks the government’s interference with the Church’s hiring and firing of priests should not be off limits?

“We think that that is a rule that is insufficiently attentive to the relative public and private interests at stake,” she said, citing “interests that this Court has repeatedly recognized are important in determining freedom of association claims.”

It was then that Breyer sprung the question of whether a woman might sue over her exclusion from the Catholic priesthood, on the same basis that Perich was suing over a religiously-grounded termination.

Kruger said the two situations were different – not categorically, but rather because “the private and public interests are very different in the two scenarios.”

“The government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace is simply not sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests, based on gender roles that are rooted in religious doctrine,” she said.

But, she said, the government does have a “compelling and indeed overriding interest in ensuring that individuals are not prevented from coming to the government with information about illegal conduct,” even if the church in question would prohibit its members from doing so on religious grounds.

I’m sorry. My spider sense is telling me that if the principle is established that these situations are not “categorically different” then it’s only a matter of time before the government, trying to pander to feminist constituencies, will decide that “the government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace” is “sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests.”

Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that this distinction between the Lutherans’ lawsuit prohibition on the one hand, and the Catholic Church’s male priesthood on the other, seemed arbitrary.

To quote President Obama, “Darn, tootin’!”

Kruger’s clearest articulation of the Obama administration’s position on religious freedom came in response to Justice Kagan’s question as to whether she was “willing to accept the ministerial exception for substantive discrimination claims, just not for retaliation claims.”

The government’s lawyer responded that “substantive discrimination” claims, such as those alleging sex discrimination, could also be legitimate grounds for a lawsuit against some religious institutions.

Yes. This generates lots of confidence that the Catholic Church will not be an institution that is tomorrow subject to lawsuits alleging sex discrimination regarding its hiring of priests.

The good news is that, based on the press account above, the justices seem skeptical of the Obama administration’s legal theory on this point—and a majority of the court are, in fact, Catholics of one stripe or another—but we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the suit, won’t we?

In the end, the Church will not base its theology on the dictates of the U.S. Supreme Court, but if things go wrong now, they could go even more wrong in the future and harm the Church’s ability to live and promulgate its faith in America.

What do you think?