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Friday 18 September 2015

Chicago's New Director of Media

An editor of Commonweal has been selected by Abp Cupich as his Archdiocese's "director of publications and media, a newly created position."
Prayers and best wishes to all concerned.
Presumably others who might have suited are otherwise engaged.

This is of a piece with a few other incidents, (or discoveries on my part, when I hadn't bothered to inform myself better,)  that have led to the first time in a long while of having one of those, I'm so sorry, I see that you were right all along moments.

We all have them.
The Rodney King beating, for instance, was a big one for many of us.
The rant of a "religious leader" captured on video was one for me.
(Not a big deal, since, admittedly I didn't have all that much respect for him before, but I wanted to cite something on the other extremity.)

And although I have never had this confession well received, I used to think a certain faction of Catholicism was making too much of their victimhood and exaggerating the liturgical sins of those on the other side of the liturgical divide.
Fat people dancing in the aisles, raisin bread instead of the Body of Christ, a "communion song" that denies the divinity of Christ, and puppets have disabused me of that, (I leave out celebrant dressed as Barney and candy distributed to First Communicants at the homily since I did not witness those first hand.)

In the case of Abp C., I read and heard about a number of things for which, while they seemed unfortunate, or even wrong, he might have had very good, prudential reasons, ( dissuading his priests from participating in a specific anti-abortion activity, for instance.)
In fact, I defended his luke-warm op-ed piece following the release of videos revelatory of Planned Parenthood's trafficking in body parts from aborted babies, (I am not similarly inclined regarding his statement in the wake of the Supreme Courts abrogating to the federal government law regarding marriage, since that had presumed Catholics as its target audience, rather than the readership of a secular newspaper, and could have been a stronger brew.)

But his long ago cruelty, (yes, that's the word I chose,) to the Latin Mass community in his diocese of Cedar Rapids during the Triduum, while I think, if I tried hard, I could have come up with a charitable and reasonable explanation for, when his own words are read, (which I only did recently,) demonstrate that he couldn't even be bothered coming up with a "reasonable explanation."
"We're just looking for an opportunity on an annual basis for us to all worship together, for one moment of unity as a Catholic church.... I'm looking for one time each year to do that, and it seems the day the Lord died for us all would be a good day to do it. That's all that this is about. There has to be some occasion on a yearly basis to reflect the fact that we are one church under one bishop. I would ask them, 'Why do they find it so difficult, on the day of the Lord's death, to celebrate with their bishop, who is the sign of the Lord's unity?'"
This is nonsense on the face of it. "Worship together"? "celebrate with their bishop"?
Was there some venue where all 30,200 some Catholic of the diocese were all going to gather with him as celebrant, all going to venerate the same Crucifix? Surely not.
And there were, at that time, 97 parishes.
So patently there would be multiple celebrations of the Passion - were they all going to use the same words from the Missal, the same chant? the same setting of the Reproaches, of the psalm?
(It seems quite possible that by his locking the Latin mass community out of their usual home, they were all going to use the same language, since Latinos were under-served in the diocese as of 2008 when they finally began having more frequent Spanish-language Masses.)

You know, it occurs to me that if he had wanted to be with them, he could have offered to preside at the Extraordinary Form for them...

Anyway, God bless you, Catholic Chicago.


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