Jul 16
Jim BowmanReligion
From CNS News about rattling the U. of Illinois cage:
The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, has given the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until the end of Friday to re-instate a professor who was relieved of his teaching duties following complaints he engaged in “hate speech” by teaching students about Catholic teaching on homosexuality in a course about Catholicism.
If he’s not reinstated, they will “seriously . . . consider a lawsuit,” fund lawyer Jordan Lawrence told U. of I, calling the student’s complaint about Dr. Kenneth Howell, the (adjunct) professor in question, a “heckler’s veto” unworthy of the university’s response, which he called “heavy handed [and] authoritarian” — “not the way classrooms should function at universities in the United States.”
The fund’s blue-ribbon board of directors includes executives of Crusade for Christ International, Focus on the Family, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Not an RC bishop among them. What do you know about that?
Jun 24
Jim BowmanReligion
In Dearborn, Michigan, it’s illegal to hand out the Bible on a public street within five blocks of a Arab festival, according to this video.
A Muslim defender saw this and rebutted it, he says. (He didn’t.)
HT: NewsAlert.
Jun 21
Jim BowmanBlithely, Religion Robert Browning, Stonehenge, summer solstice
Let’s hear it for Stonehenge in our post-Christian age (common era, you know):
“It means a lot to us … being British and following our pagan roots,” said Victoria Campbell, who sported a pair of white angel’s wings and had a mass of multicolored flowers in her hair.
The 29-year-old Londoner, who works in the finance industry, also said that “getting away from the city” was a major draw.
She was celebrating the solstice in an all-night party. With her and others was
Gina Pratt, a 43-year-old housewife and a self-described witch, [who] said being inside the circle as the sun came up gave her “a kind of a grounding feeling (of) being in touch with the earth again, and the air we breathe.”
Is this what Browning meant when he wrote
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!
I doubt it, but probably not
Pratt, who wore a cape of crushed red velvet and wielded an amethyst-tipped wand [and] said the event gave rise to conflicting emotions.
“It makes you feel small and insignificant … but it makes you feel like you’re here for a reason.”
For more of Browning, go here.
For more about Stonehenge, scroll down in this same Christian Science Monitor article.
For more about the summer solstice, look out the window.
Jun 14
Jim BowmanReligion
My debut column for Chicago Catholic News is up.
(POSTED: 6/14/10) Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Glenview (OLPH) hosted a discussion of clergy sex abuse on June 7. Featured speakers were Michael Bland, a therapist and himself an abuse survivor and former priest, and Rev. Larry McBrady, a former vicar for priests in the archdiocese.
Bland had delivered a stemwinder of a speech about his own experience, an “impact statement,” in 2002 at the bishops’ meeting in Dallas, where he said movingly of his abuse experience:
My life was changed in ways I could never have imagined. I continue to be victimized because the perpetrating priest has something that was stolen from me — my youthful innocence and my priesthood. At times I am still plagued with questions starting with “what if . . .” — questions that can never be answered . . . .
Read the rest at Chicago Catholic News.
Jun 03
Jim BowmanReligion
What a tough sell Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix AZ has to convince people it was not OK to abort an unborn to save a mother’s life.
Just this one time, say his critics. For a good reason. We won’t bother you after that.
It’s a bad thing in itself, he says.
What the heck are you talking about? they say. What’s this bad-in-itself stuff? Look, Bishop, with all respect, we decide things as we go along. Why can’t you understand that?
That’s the issue, he said or could say. If we decide as we go, it’s paddy-bar-the-door for all sorts of things.
I’m not in the business of legislating or making executive orders or even of judging, he might continue — except in the court of conscience, mine first of all, in fact most of all, even exclusively in this case.
I cannot say the hell with it in this one case, this one time, for this good reason. Once I do, why not the next time, for the next good reason?
I become Solomon dividing the disputed baby or — God save the mark — the Warren Court setting rules for the states: Thou shalt not . . . Etc. Etc.
You get my drift? he might conclude.
Later: He being Olmsted, not Olmstead, by the way, as Olmstead points out in his comment below. So instead of Olmstead when you mean the bishop of Phoenix, write Olmsted. I may have Olmstead take my stead next time I write about the Phoenix Olmsted. His experience will stand him in good stead. (sic)
May 25
Jim BowmanReligion
Lifted from Newsalert:
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on Obama friend Eric Whitaker:
Based on a recommendation from Obama, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich hired Whitaker to be the state’s director of Public Health in 2003. Like other major state posts in those days, it was screened by Tony Rezko, who has since been convicted of influence-peddling.
A federal grand jury is investigating the department’s funding of several faith-based initiatives that Whitaker helped start, though, as Whitaker emphasized today, “The organizations the subpoenas were about — they received funding in the last month of my tenure at the Illinois Department of Public Health.
There’s more:
Is sending government money to pastors to talk about chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension good public policy? Whitaker said “yes.”
Who’s says Democrats are for separation of church and state?
Not I. Do we expect churchly influence to be ignored by political movers and shakers?
I recall the Baptist pastor I interviewed in the 70s on Chicago’s South Side. He had just run a two-hour service for a devoted congregation. We talked in his office, among other things about office-seekers wanting to use his pulpit. He did not surrender it to them, and so did not have his sidewalk repaired.
Separation? You kidding?
May 22
Jim BowmanReligion
Catholic bishops get religion:
“The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights regrets the decision by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to discontinue its membership in The Leadership Conference. The USCCB has been an important and valued member of The Leadership Conference for many years, and we have – and will continue to have – many shared goals.
From the peanut gallery:
Progressive Catholics responded on Thursday by accusing the bishops of being “completely beholden to the extreme conservative wing of Catholicism.”
“In recent months, (the bishops) have shown that it is more important to them that they placate the demands of a few loud conservatives than to promote civility, human rights and social justice,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice.
What the bishops said:
The bishops withdrew from LCCR after the coalition took one more position in opposition to USCCB policy, this time taking a stand on a Supreme Court nominee. Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre NY, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Peace, announced the withdrawal May 19.
It’s overdue, says Deal Hudson, who broke the news of the Kagan endorsement:
. . . the Kagan endorsement wasn’t the first pro-abortion activity the coalition has promoted.
[Deal Hudson] wrote: “For many years, LCCHR has lobbied hard against the confirmation of pro-life judges and justices. In the midst of the debate of pro-abortion nominee Dawn Johnsen, [Deputy Director] Nancy Zirkin asserted that civil-rights groups are upset that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) hasn’t made the abortion advocate a higher priority. ‘There’s frustration she’s not at the top of the list,’ Zirkin said.”
“The avid support for Elena Kagan, whose support for abortion “rights” has been widely documented, must be regarded as the final straw, a clear signal that the USCCB needs to withdraw from membership in the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights,” Hudson concluded.
Now if the bishops could get a handle on illegal immigration . . .
May 22
Jim BowmanReligion
WSJ’s Daniel Henninger asks, “How about a good Catholic story?”
May 16
Jim BowmanReligion
“Being a saint is God’s main goal for you,” Rev. James Martin SJ told Wheeling (WV) Jesuit U. graduates, but it was downhill from there:
The key to becoming a good saint for God [he added] is to always “remember to be yourself.”
“God celebrates diversity,” he said. “We are meant to be ourselves.”
But what if yourself is no damn good? You routinely lie, cheat, and call people bad names. Will “Be yourself” do it then?
Other advice landed better, if platitudinously:
“You are called to lead holy lives in your own way – in your own careers,” he said. “I can do something you can’t do, you can do something I can’t do – together let us do something for God. In our diversity, we can do something for God.
Diversity, eh? That’s the burning issue? No prayer and meditation?
“The biggest barrier to overcome is thinking you have to be someone else,” said Martin. “You are overlooking the beauty of what God has created.”
I do not think that’s the biggest barrier, being much inclined to give higher rating to putting Number One first, to the exclusion of other blokes.
In closing, Martin told the graduates the key is to “bloom where you are planted and be holy by being yourself.”
And go sweet-smelling off into the sunset, yeah!
May 08
Jim BowmanReligion
The Larry Reuter case from many angles, at Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit:
13 comments:
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Anonymous said…
Good and Holy Jesuits.
Please fix this problem.
kate said…
As everybody knows, Jesuits can be so different from each other.
In this case, a later provincial, new in the job, found that an abusive Jesuit who was still in ministry should be removed.
In my case, featured in the NY Times last week, later Jesuit provincials (Missouri) totally messed up, putting an abusive Jesuit BACK in ministry AND violating a legal contract that the first Missouri Jesuit provincial had bound the province to already, including his successors.
Jesuits are so varied. Some are honest. Some lie. Some are good communicators. Some hide. Some deal with people honestly and fairly. Some look for all the excuses they can find. Some want to help. Some want you to go away. Some admit mistakes. Some never will.
Anonymous said…
Glaringly absent is identification of the sex of the victim…Ad nauseam we read of theses stories. I am convinced that the evil to which these priests fall prey is the result of the death of their spiritual life. Yet nowhere is this mentioned in the saga of evil to which we are daily subjected…
I hope that you are persevering, Kate. I will remember you in my prayers tonight. Be well and trust in His Mercy…
Maria said…
Kate–Sorry.Above comment was mine.
Maria
Robert Carter said…
During my nine years in Jesuit life (1991-1999), two Jesuits made my life amazingly difficult.
One was Fr. Paul Carrier, who has been removed from public ministry after his ties to sexual abuse in Haiti were made public.
The other was Fr. Larry Reuter, rector of the Loyola Jesuit Community and campus chaplain.
After years of psychological manipulation and feeling an outcast because I failed to conform to their “vision” of the Church, I have been vindicated.
Jesuit provincials – why admit young men into formation when you leave them in the hands of men such as these.
Jean-Francois Thomas s.j said…
The word sorry is not enough to express what I feel, as a Jesuit, when I read the terrible story of Kate, or the psychological abuse (in Jesuit formation)of Robert… For sure, there is a daily fight between good and evil for every human being, but an institution like the Society of Jesus could have avoided so many failures, sins and crimes in its ranks.Fidelity seems to be a reality of the past or an ideal never real. All Jesuits must take the cross and repent for their own weaknesses and for the ones of their fellow Jesuits. There is no escape if we really want purification. May the Lord bless and console all our victims.
Joseph Fromm said…
I am speechless.
Robert Carter said…
Merci, Pere Thomas. Your apology is not necessary, though it is appreciated. May God bless you in your work.
Abuse in the formation process was far too common in the 90’s. Too many men were made to feel outcast because they identified with more conservative & traditional schools of theological thought.
More insidious was the not so subtle attraction some men had to the younger scholastics. Fr. Reuter had his favorites among the scholastics at Loyola Chicago. Having the rector of the community make eyes at you over the dinner table was disconcerting – at best.
I always suspected him of being a “chickenhawk” (a man who is attracted to younger men), but never had enough evidence to prove it – until now.
For the record, I am now married and am quite active in ministry at our parish. My Jesuit formation has not gone to waste.
Jean-Francois Thomas s.j said…
Dear Mr. Carter, yes indeed it is difficult today for a Jesuit to be so called “conservative” (meaning in fact just faithful to the Church teaching). I entered the novitiate in the 80’s and the problem was widespread. Good you were able to go through and that you did not lose hope and faith, now happily married and serving, loving the Church in another way.But for many years , the same Jesuits who have been ruining many vocations are also the ones who are now involved in many cases of sexual abuses, since all the different kinds of abuse are connected together. Hedonism is too often the center of religious life and personnal sacrifice is put aside. The lack of deep spiritual and sacramental life is at the root of our failures and sins as Jesuits.
Go on with the good life. Be blessed.
Anonymous said…
i knew fr. reuter when i first moved to chicago back in the early 80’s. my own jesuit background from cincinnati st. xavier was deep, with 2 uncles in the society as well.
my faith is not shaken, nor is my affection for the jesuits i have known so well over the years.
however, we must take our medicine and shut up. no mea culpa’s, no hand wringing, no salvation through novena. in my life, i had known several jesuits who were obviously effeminate, but never heard of any impropriety, ever. i had, though, know of homosexuality/pedophelia in camp counselors and athletic coaches. that said…you can call it a lie and you can call it a damn lie, but it’s the same thing. only difference is, obviously, jesuits take vows which transcend contracts signed by coaches and counselors.
i am so disappointed. i have worn my jesuit upbringing on my sleeve my whole life, with fierce pride. it has defined me in my life, and has defined my family for more than 100 years. i am glad my parents and 2 jesuit uncles are not alive to see this.
Anonymous said…
Why did Reuter have so much power at the Jesuit Provincial’s office even after he admitted to sex abuse in 1990? Why was he part of the Jesuit team to investigate “Miconduct” cases and decide the fate of other pedophile priests? Isn’t that like ‘the pot calling the kettle black?’
Anonymous said…
I just learned of this case from my parents. Having moved to the North Shore in 1978, I spent my senior year at Loyola Academy. As president of LA, Larry Reuter was instrumental in making me feel like I belonged: he introduced me to group of students who lived close to my new house, with whom I quickly became good friends. He encouraged me to help with the school play. I feel lucky to have eanded up–in this year where I was the new guy–in a school where he was in charge.
None of this excuses what appears to have happened in these accusations. But it is possible for a man to have done many good things and, regrettably, a few bad ones.