One of my regular commentators has been hacked. I got an e-mail from him, claiming he was in Madrid, had his wallet and passport, and needed 1,500 to get home. Atlantic magazine has an article this month “Hacker” on this precise scam.

Moreover, his e-mail may be attached so that any e-mails sent to him are not getting to him but instead are going to the hacker.

I am hesitant to name him but if any of you are not getting email your whole contact list may be getting desperate requests to send you 1,500 in Madrid.

You can e-mail me privately if you think you are the one (and there may be more than one) who has been hacked.

Lee Podles

Today is the Feast of St. James.

Vivat Hispania!

And what is a feast without fireworks?

I am hiking in the rain forests of thr Northwest (with the emphasis on rain).

I will moderate comments every few days.

I do not know enough about Islam to enter into that conversation, but I find it very interesting

Lee

 The Jesuits are not aware that the Koran is not the Scripture of the Catholic Church. Perhaps interreligious dialogue between Jesuits and Catholics would help the Jesuits to understand Catholicism better.

 A plan to allow for the reading of the Quran from the pulpit during a Mass at St. Peter Church in Charlotte June 26 has been canceled, with an interfaith dialogue planned for October instead. St. Peter Parish had agreed to take part in an event called Faith Shared, in which priests, rabbis and Muslim scholars are scheduled to read sacred texts in each other’s houses of worship. The event is a project of two groups, the Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First. In announcing the cancellation June 7, Jesuit Father Patrick Earl, pastor of St. Peter, noted that a 2004 Vatican document, “Redemptionis Sacramentum” (“The Sacrament of Redemption”) expressly forbids the reading of texts from other religions during the celebration of Mass.

Some women in Catonsville, Maryland, were supposedly ordained by a women  bishop of dubious lineage, who emphasizes that 

Roman Catholic Womenpriests traces its origins to the so-called Danube Seven, a group of women who were ordained aboard a ship in the river in 2002 by three male bishops. Two of those bishops were never publicly identified, while the third, an Argentine named Romulo Braschi, was called a “founder of a schismatic community” by the Vatican. The seven women were excommunicated, but RCWP believes their ordinations were legitimate, providing the “apostolic succession” that made all subsequent ordinations legitimate. 

I wonder why the one doctrine  that such irregular ordinands focus upon is the necessity of apostolic succession of bishops for a valid ordination. If the Catholic Church is wrong about not being able to ordain women (and about a large variety  of other matters on which such people usually disagree with the Church) why do they think it is right about the issue of apostolic succession?

From The New York Times

 France is Scolded over Care of Great Hamster of Alsace 

 and 

Illinois: Priest Accused of Helping Mobster Keep Violin

The violin in question was probably safer with the mobsters than with the feds. Perhaps the priest was a musician .

My friend Dan Cere at McGill University got a error message when he tried to post his comment, so here it is: 

Comment on “The Priests We Deserve” 

Clare McGrath-Merkle’s comment on Leon Podles’s insightful post on Berullian conceptions of the priest provides a few more examples of the persistence of dangerously inflated theological visions of the clerical state.  According to McGrath-Merkle, Fr. Stephen Rossetti is a contemporary exponent of this majestic view of holy orders.  

Curiously Fr. Rossetti (Catholic University of America) is also a well-respected commentator on the clerical abuse crisis.  His publications include: Tragic Grace: The Catholic Church and Child Sexual Abuse, and Slayers of the Soul: Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.  He served as president of St. Luke’s Institute for many years and claims to have an amazing success rate in the treatment of clerical child molesters (treated 150 clerical child abusers with only 2.7% recidivism) and success in returning them to priestly ministry (with some restraints on contacts with minors). 

While the priest may participate in the mysterious heights of the Christological mysteries, in Slayers of the Soul, Fr. Rossetti argues that the molester reveals the dark muddier depths of our ordinary humanity.  According to Fr. Rossetti,  the child molester reveals disturbing truths about the “inner darkness” that dwells within each one of us.  He stresses our common humanity with the molester and the unsettling ways in which our “inner darkness” is reflected in spectre of the “dirty old man” stalking his prey.    He writes:  

“As a society, we would like to believe that child molesters are different, perhaps even evil, and that they should be treated with contempt and removed from our midst.  Indeed, their crimes cannot be minimized, but neither can our common, broken humanity.  We must not forget that our own inner darkness which makes us resemble the “dirty old man” that stalks his prey in the night.  The existence of our private darkness frightens us just as much as the spectre of the active child molester.  Perhaps if we are afraid of this “dirty old man,” concoct unreal myths about him, and wish to banish him from our midst, it is because we are afraid of what he shows us about ourselves. But the truth is he is in our midst, and he looks a lot like us.” (Slayers, 17) 

Sexual abuse, he argues, is “merely…a symptom of an underlying problem in our society.” (Slayers, 186) It is not just the abuser, but “the entire system that is dysfunctional” and all “contribute, in some way, to the patient’s disorder…. pedophilia and ephebophilia might be seen as a symptom of an underlying disorder within our entire society.” (Slayers, 187)  He argues that “the seeds” of this disorder are found in the family: “pedophilia and ephebophilia can be thought of as illnesses that spring from the context of our family.  It is the entire family that is ill and is in need of healing.” (Slayers, 188-189) 

Fr. Rossetti encourages us to come to terms with  “an uncomfortable familiarity with the child molester…to identify with the child molester, because he or she is a member of our family” and “his or her struggles are much like ours” (Slayers, 198)  In his concluding words Fr. Rossetti affirms the liberating message that the child molester offers us: “This may be the hardest yet potentially the most liberating challenge the child molester places before us: to see within ourselves the seeds of this tragedy, and to recognize in the face of the perpetrator the features of our own countenance.” (198-199)   

In short, Fr. Rossetti might embrace a high inflated vision of the priesthood, but he seems to propose a deeply deflated view of our common humanity and the family.   The child molester, it seems, is everyman.  The molester reveals the ingrained slimy sinfulness of our ordinary common humanity.    

Awareness of the brokenness of our common humanity is a central gospel message.  But this did not prevent Jesus from reacting to those who would harm children with a severity (Matt 18) that Fr. Rossetti seems to repudiate.  In Slayers of the Soul Fr. Rossetti suggests that a critical path forward in the abuse crisis seems to be one of mutual recognition, fellow-feeling with molesters, and “general confession” of our common sinful humanity.  Jesus’ stern warnings about harm to children welcomed into the church, coupled with his threats of millstones and the severing of limbs, would appear to point in a somewhat different pastoral direction. 

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust;”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

God grant this victory lead to peace.

My last statement “in almost all priests” is not clear. What I meant was that Catholics are repeatedly told that reception of the sacraments is the surest path to holiness. Priests have the most intimate association with the sacraments; one would expect that except in the rarest cases (1 out of  10,000, 1 out of  100,000) priests would therefore at least exhibit good character. But at least 5 % of American priests have been sexual abusive to minors, plus the ones who have entered into abusive relationships with adults. 

Clearly simple reception of the sacraments is not sufficient. What is missing? Repentance? A lively faith? Or is the expectation that the sacraments would repair grave defects such as psychopathy or extreme narcissism an unreasonable expectation? 

In many cases these aberrant characters did not “sneak through.” Their defects were known or strongly suspected in the seminaries, but they were ordained anyway.