Care to join the "Heresy of the Month Club"?

This isn't new at all, not sure why it popped up on the screen, but USCatholic is so dependable...

Really, why settle for a measly little Trinity when you can have a Quaternity?

Should I be angry to read Blessed Teresa of Calcutta maligned? not to say, "lied about"?

I have a problem with... I have been having a problem with anger.
And I have come, or at least think I have come to an acceptance of the fact that the source is, not as a priest suggested to me a sorrow to which I did not wish to subject myself again, (which would have allowed me to be play the victim,) but a pride-produced expectation that things would go my way because things SHOULD go my way, because, well, ME.

I had forgotten something, a few years ago a very good and very wise woman  at a CMAA "do" warned me about becoming like another very good but not quite as wise woman.
They had very similar PsOV, held to very similar principles, both theological/spiritual and liturgical/musical; and embraced similar currents of Catholic thought - currents I was watching from the bank, into which I was cautiously dipping the occasional toe.
Don't become like her, don't be angry all the time.
Because she was right, you see, but she was damaging herself and her causes with the anger. (Her anger did come from having been wounded, genuinely, and perhaps a resolution to attack rather than be vulnerable? I don't know. But I digress.)
I think I have actually gained on handle on my situation.
I try to remember opponents are not enemies, everyone has his reasons of which I know not, and stop gettin' all judgey.
This is easiest, actually - strangely - in affairs about which I am most passionate: no matter how stupid or wrong-headed their ideas or actions, I cannot think that any other human being in the Church is stupid and wrong-headed out of malice.
No one, despite Shakespeare's Iago and Shaefer's Salieri, no sane person deliberately sets themselves against Almighty God, no one is knowingly a tool of the evil one.

Is he?

A Useful Idiot, perhaps, but not knowingly and believingly in league with the devil.

On the Great Time Suck That Is Those Interwebs. (hereinafter the GTSITI,) I came across a screed about good priests who have borne the displeasure of TPTB, and dissenting or at least politically savvy chancery hounds, (and yes, thinking, there but for the grace of God go I, I thank Thee that I am not like other orthodox Catholics, angry and....)

Shockingly, I recognized a name, someone with whom I have broken bread many a time.
But that is neither here no there.
Looking into that, I came across another thing and another, and then this, and then that.... as I said, you know the GTSTITI.
Finally, (stumbling across quite a bit of anger from one side and superciliousness from the other along the way,) I ended up at a eulogy for a departed religious sister.
The writer told a story the religious sister had told him about something Dorothy Day told her, (or perhaps the sister had supposedly overheard,) that she, (DD,) had said to and regarding Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, and it seemed... spurious? uncharacteristic? And we all know about "quotes on the internet" and "who never said what."

And another story. The mid-70s rolled around, and organizers asked José to emcee the Eucharistic Conference in Philadelphia. In this particular sessions were some five thousand women. Two speakers were on hand: Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, both close friends of José.
First, José introduced Mother Teresa -- on that day in a foul mood. She rose to the podium, all fire and brimstone, and excoriated the women in the audience. You nuns -- why aren’t wearing your habits? You mothers -- how is it you’re here and not home with your children? The women withered and blanched. Mother Teresa had left them hurt and angry, and she returned to her seat to the deafening sound of silence. Not a pair of hands offered applause. Mother Teresa seemed taken aback.
With tension now on the air, José introduced Dorothy Day. She sidled up to Mother Teresa and leaned in close and issued something in the nature of a rebuke: “Mother, you know I love you more than anyone. But don’t you ever say anything like that again. You have alienated and hurt all these good women. They need our encouragement!” As far as anyone knows, Mother Teresa never did. 

That didn't sound right.
And if wrong, it does seem malicious.
Well, it seems Mother Teresa gave two talks at this 1976 Congress. The Tablet, not exactly in the vanguard of the hosts of Catholic orthodoxy tells us,

Big names studded the programmes : Archbishop Helder Camara, Cardinal Suenens, Dorothy Day and the rest. The press and the public swarmed, around Mother Teresa of Calcutta. "They idolise her without imitating her," a Canadian Protestant muttered in my ear.

Having read the snipe at Blessed Teresa in the National Catholic Reporter, I couldn't help but think of the spin put on Ratzinger's election by those who opposed him, reports of the sad, shocked, weepy crowd in St Peter's Square. You remember them, how upset and sullen everyone was -

 

Right.
So here is a site with quite a bit about the Eucharistic Congress, (not "conference",) in question.
As I said, two talks from Blessed Teresa, one sound recording here, and the full text of the address she gave on the day when she shared the stage with Dorothy Day.

Go ahead, read it. It's GORGEOUS.

I don't think I am going out a limb at all to say that someone lied, both regarding the content of what she said, and the probable reaction to it.
Lied.
LIED.
I don't know who. (I doubt it was the also-soon-to-be-sainted Day. I'll leave it at that.)
Well, as the Gospel today reminds us, the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.

Do You Know What the Devil's Sin Is?

Isn't lucifer's sin pride?
Well, yes, at first it was pride, but that's over with now.
He is all too aware of the depths to which he condemned himself.

The sin on which his soul now feeds itself is envy.

He is envious of us who still have to opportunity not to disobey, to say, unlike him, serviam.

And he has hope - in this case not the Theological Virtue, but the burning desire for, and the knowledge that it is still possible, that we, like him, will choose wrong.

There are some people who think that the balm, the comfort needed to assuage the pain of their failures is, that's right - the failure of others. (Though they would not express it that way.)

Father Dwight Longenecker has a piece on an ex-priest who sketching the outlines for us of the schism he says is coming.

What mystifies me is why people like [him] remain in the Catholic Church at all. Other progressive Catholics have been much less hypocritical. Realizing that their views are contrary to Catholic teaching they have left to start their own churches.

Does it really mystify you, Fr L?
His former vocation is the clue.
I'm afraid the poor guy's hanging around hoping to see that, if he couldn't stick it? well, at least a lot of other people couldn't either.

And I believe, I hope.... that his is a false hope.

"Dear God, This is What You Ought To Do...."

Or, maybe, "This is what I would do if I were You, God."
"And by the way, You should know this...."

I read once about how off-putting some Prayers of the Faithful are, and how difficult it can be to compose them.
"For XXX, that YYY, we pray to the Lord...."

                             "Lord, hear our prayer."

Not the XXX part, we know pretty well what the problems, our problems are.

But the YYY?

Do we really want to tell God what the solution to the problems with which we present Him should be?

Isn't this a corker?

Lord God, we seek to follow the example of your Word, your Son and our Brother, Jesus.
We know from Him that your Holy Spirit is with us when we gather together in Your Name.

(Pretty good, so far.)

Therefore it is important to us that....

(Nope, couldn't resist giving the Big Fellow, and I don't mean the cardinal archbishop of NY, a word of advice, could ya?)

We believe that this is only possible for a Church that...

So much for,

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.”

Of course, that's not a very popular chapter just now in the world at large, is it?

In fact, I shouldn't be surprised if it has been excised from a number of Bibles - so the authors of that prayer are not to blame for not knowing it. This is how the beginning of it goes:

The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him. He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” In the house the disciples again questioned him about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” 

Oh, VOTF finish their prayer like this:

We long for a Church which acknowledges the full value of all its people and bases its judgments on Your Word.
Please help us become that Church. Amen.

Basing our judgements on Your Word.... hmm.
And on His words?

How Popular is Marriage?

A writer in the Non Catholic Rundown says that,

marriage has probably never been as popular as it is among the LGBT community.

and that,

Countless same-sex couples really do "feel like" getting married.

Are either of those statements true?
She does say "probably" in the first, but is it probable? and are the gay or lesbians who want to marry really "countless"? or even many?
I don't pretend to be able to make sense of statistics like these, but anecdotally it seems very unlikely.
And are the gay or lesbians who want to marry really "countless"? or even many?
Again, I don't see the evidence.
I have no idea if the cliches about women being the driving force in traditional marriage are correct or old (wannabe) wives' tales.
But there seems enough data to support the thesis that biologically male humans are driven to "want" numerous mates, and females are hard-wired to "want" the protection of monogamy.
With only men in the mix, promiscuity seems almost a given.
Strangely, from the stats referenced above, "while fewer women have entered into civil partnerships overall, there are more that have had a dissolution."
Go figure.
I haven't had a large circle of lesbian friends since college, so I have no opinion or guess on how much they clamor for marriage, but for many years fully 3/4 of my friends, colleagues, drinking buddies were gay men.
Three quarters, at least.
And these were several different social circles over the years, in a milieu that far from stigmatizing homosexuality, (or any kind of sexuality at all, for that matter,) celebrated it, and allowed everyone to be as open as they wished.
An tiny minority chose to be, or at least succeeded in being in "steady" relationships of even as long-lived as a year.
And of that minority, the vast majority were in open partnerships.
Now, a good deal of the impermanence may be blamed on the nomadic work situations and lifestyle, but girls who were living out of town for a run and involved with someone back in the city were, far more often than not, sexually faithful.

None of this is really relevant to whether same sex partnerships are moral, or ought to be legal, I'm just questioning whether the writer's contentions have any basis in fact.

We've all realized that even when "everyone knows" something, it's not necessarily true.
No matter how often you sing about it in a fundraiser.

"Mawwiage.... mawwiage!" and "Showing Your Work"

 

Over at the Nominally Catholic Rundown a writer manages to gratuitously, (yeah, I split that... sue me,)  impugn the motives of priests who hold different ecclesiological viewpoints than herself, ("careerist minions," as if such people exist only in more conservative swaths of the Church,)
to imply that only the low-born are guilty of inebriated spousal abuse, ("disastrously married to Joe Six-Pack, who comes home drunk every night and beats her,")
to cast aspersions upon anyone who has respect for the Law and doctrine,
("the clerics who work for Müller [emphasis added] look for ... mistakes. There's got to be a law in there somewhere, and if not, we'll write a decree or something,")
and finally to remind us that we have not always been allowed a glimpse of the inside of the sausage factory, ("Francis has opened the living room doors, and now we are talking about that fat elephant that bedevils so many lives.")
Now, in general I'm a big fan of acknowledging the housebound elephants, with doing which, we would be giving each other the, "Ooooh, was that YOU??!???" look whilst holding our noses.

But in the case of Church teachings, which are, I will repeat, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, not mere protocols and procedures?
I have a friend whose conversational idiosyncrasies leave the rest of our circle.... let's just say confused as to what was really meant, or decided upon in any discussion.
"What time do you want to leave?" someone will ask.
Answers she, well, lets see. Three o'clock. Full stop.
"Okay."
But after a beat she will continue, Yes, three is when I have to be at such and such, so we'd have to leave here by two to be finished at thus and so in time....
By this point, others will begin to understand that there has not actually been what you could rightly call an "answer", she is, as they used to say in math class, "showing her work."
.... Now if we stop at thus and so on the way, we'll need an extra 15 minutes...
.... But I can take care of that later in the week...
.... Last time it didn't take as long, so it will probably only take three quarters of an hour to get there....
.... But school is out...
(Does that mean more or less time is required?)
.... So we'll need time to park.....
.....But not as much as we would have....
.... So let's leave only a little earlier. Full stop.
WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE???!?@?#????
Oh, you know what, it's faster with a parking pass.
WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE???!?@?#????
Anyone have one?
WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE???!?@?#????
Well what I said.
WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE???!?@?#????
It is perfectly possible for three different people to have been left with three different impressions of what she has actually decided regarding when we will leave.

The Church, as a whole, the Faithful?
We are the circle of friends.
The Synod?
That's my idiosyncratic friend.

I know the Nominally Catholic Rundown has already mocked the notion of confusion having been sown by the way in which the hierarchy under Francis is approaching things, but I think that was only because David Gibson wanted to mock Cardinal Burke.

I think the Church is plenty confused by the Synod Fathers insisting on showing their work, scribbling all over the damned page, crossing out, whiting out, erasing, and filling the page with so many nermals and symbols that we are at a loss to know what was actually done, what was actually decided. (And dishonest  reporting has not lessened the confusion. I'm talking to you, Nominally Catholic Rundown .)
Holy Father, most of us just want to know,
WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE???!?@?#????

Or if you prefer the Nominally Catholic Rundown's analogy, please, Holy Father, keep the door to the living room shut until you've cleaned up the elephant dung.

It's Not Like It's a CATHOLIC School, or Anything....

... oh, wait.
It is.
Don't know the parish in question or the school, don't know the priests, or the parents, no skin in the game.
So they might be right. (Who "might be right"? you ask. Exactly.)
Or they might be jerks. (See above.)

Anyway, admittedly, no skin in the game.

But here's my thinking, (or rather, my rhetorical questioning):
How is having non-Catholics perform liturgical functions at Mass NOT a practice to which a stop should have been put?
And since in a city such as San Francisco it's a safe bet that most kids can't or don't walk to Church by themselves, how is getting a handle on how many of your charges ARE NOT PRACTICING by finding out whether their families attend Mass NOT part of you mission?

And who thinks the zeitgeist of San Francisco is NOT "savagely distorted"?

Not US!!!

"Can we talk....?"

 That's the plea from, (no, not Sr. Mary Joan Rivers,)

(Ya know, if she had spoken Catholish, it would have been, "Can we break into small discussion groups with facilitators for each one?")

but from a few loose threads on the fringes of Catholicism -

clericalism pervades the Church at all levels. It's not just bishops who insulate themselves from the voices of lay people and, sometimes, their own priests. It's not just the priest or pastor who assumes license to overrule all other input and ignore parishioners' voices. It's also lay people with a "Father says" or "what will Father think" attitude. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, clericalism isn't even in the same league as the "demi-clericalism" running rampant in many American parishes, there is NO ONE as eager to "assume license", "overrule all other input" and "ignore parishioners' voices" as a Catholic lay minister with certification from some other Catholic lay minister who manages to gain for himself control of any facet of parish life.
(And by "himself" I almost always mean "herself.")
And if there are two such at odds? Bloodsport.
Of course, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church has fringes on both sides, the selvages are unravelling -

Richard Williamson, the bishop consecrated by Lefebvre and dismissed from the Fraternity of St. Pius X in 2012 [ordained] a new bishop... on the feast of St. Joseph in the monastery of Santa Cruz in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.... The consecration of a bishop without a papal mandate will make the ordaining party, ... the person being ordained, ... liable to a latae sententiae excommunication. 

Good Saint Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord, and Guardian of the Church Universal, pray for us!

"Christian Ethicists"? "Christian" Ethicists? Christian "Ethicists"?

This isn't really current, but the name of a rather silly woman popped up, in a very admiring mention, in a newsletter in my inbox this morning, and I did a little googling to see why her name struck a bell.

Oh, yes, her.

But I remember this niggling at me at the time:

Given that in Christian theology the understanding of personhood is fundamentally relational because it bears the image of the Triune God, it is hard to see how an embryo can be deemed a person before even the mother enters into a rudimentary relationship with it. As many as one in four pregnancies may spontaneously abort during the first eight weeks of pregnancy, often without the woman knowing that she was pregnant. As some Catholic ethicists point out, the logical corollary of this position is that a woman should baptise every menstrual period – just in case.

Is this made of whole cloth, or are there really any such people?
I can find this, even as sarcastic snark, nowhere except as attributed to her.
Anyone know?
Marginally amusing....

"Dissent"?

Does this not have a fairly specific meaning in the language of my tribe, in Catholish?

Is it correct to label every disagreement with a person who has some authority in the Church "dissent"?

Is it honest to advance a claim of some sort of parity between disagreeing with a pope's magisterial encyclicals and a lack of "enthusiasm" for a pope's ideas?

I don't think so, Cdl Wuerl, I really don't.
And I don't believe you honestly think so, either.

Because Rite 3 Was So Fruitful When Pushed On Us Before

From time to time I see the newsletter of "Voice of the Faithful," so-called.

Earlier this week, on Ash Wednesday, the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests announced its 1,000-plus members were endorsing a letter to all U.S. bishops requesting full restoration of Vatican II rites for penance. Specifically, they seek return of "Rite 3," a communal liturgical service and communal absolution." This will rebuild and encourage a return to the practice of individual confession, they say. Today, 75% of Catholics have abandoned the sacrament, and Rite 3 would "move hearts in the future toward the value of periodic personal confession."

Does this not appear in Culpepper's Thesaurus of Idiom and Adage as the very definition of "throwing good money after bad"?
I went to plenty of "Reconciliation Services" with general absolution. PLENTY.  Everytime I was anywhere near a parish offering one I went. Lots of different places, lots of different dioceses, lots of different parishes.
When I was in one spot long enough and went to several at the same Church, the one thing I noticed was the dwindling crowds over time.
But ya know what?
I don't ever remember a parish that said, gee, that was a huge success, we're going to have to increase our hours for personal confession.
Anyone else ever see that happen?

Gee, that didn't work at all, I got a GREAT idea -- lets try it again!

There's dragons, and then there's DRAGONS

But where is the "there" that the dragons be?
Himself had to go to the library yesterday in search of an older, longish PBS serial that is being re-broadcast at too slow a pace for those of us becoming accustomed to entertainment on demand, and while there we borrowed another movie.
It had the intriguing title of There Be Dragons.
Historical dramas appeal to Himself, and I was slightly curious about St Josemaria Escriva, of whom I had never heard until his canonization.
Several times recently I have come across a devotional reflection or a quote that spoke to me and absent-mindedly noted, Oh, St Josemaria Escriva, hmmm... now what's for lunch?
(Yeah, that's pretty much how my mind works.)
My only thoughts of Opus Dei had been, Oh, there was a spy or two, I think... is there any cheese in the refrigerator?  until that ludicrous Done Brown book and its even more foolish movie adaptation.
When a rite or a person or an organization is the target of irrational hatred and blatant lies, I am always inclined to think better of it, so I certainly didn't  have a bad opinion of either the man or his movement, but I hadn't thought enough about him or it to have a good one, either.

Anyway, found the movie engaging, even more so after watching the 'deleted scenes' --  after almost every dvd I watch, I'm finding myself shaking my head at the stupidity of the studio/editor/director, WHY was thus-and-such left out, it would have explained.... I wonder where those cashews are...and of course, sometimes a few extra seconds make, or would have made, the movie SHORTER.
I think as gorgeous and sweeping as it was, as compelling as most of the acting was, and as profound as the questions it asked were even if taken as fiction, it would have played better if it had been unapologetically epic.
Was it fiction? I didn't know, I don't know.
Got pretty bad reviews, but as Himself said, can a film about religious faith that treats its subject without irony possibly please the average citric?
Maybe, but I see his point.
But just doing a little surfing, background, etc., came across this, a thing in a Jesuit magazine that borders on a hit piece:

According to [other priests on campus], an Opus Dei priest...presented himself to the campus ministry group, which welcomed his offer to assist with chaplaincy duties. Soon after beginning his work, [the Opus Dei priest] presented to the other chaplains a list of the number of communions he had distributed and the number of confessions he had heard—as an objective way of measuring whether a priest was doing his job. Said one of the ex-chaplains, “He came to the rest of us and said, ‘I don’t think the chaplaincy program is doing this work. You should be doing what I’m doing’.”
Later, [he] began interviewing all entering Catholic freshmen, over the objections of some of the staff. It was at this time that the problems began. According to[the other priests, he] asked questions about students’ sexual practices, among other things, and about their parents’ religious activities. In addition: “Some of the students claimed he coerced them into having the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession, as he called it. He would say, ‘You really need to go to confession. The chapel’s right around the corner and I’m available now.’

 Oh no! Confession!!!!!!!!!! ("as he called it"... too funny coming from another priest!) Encouragement of reception of the Sacraments!!!!! Questions to initiate an examination of conscience!!!!!!!

As I said, I am often drawn to ideas or people that elicit criticism of a certain type...
I believe I have 999 things to read.

Don't say: 'That's the way I'm made... it's my character'. It's your lack of character: Be a man.

A Permanent "Vacation From the Church"

The Non Catholic Rundown has an obituary for the late Richard McBrien. Oddly, I was just thinking about him last week, wondering, as I thought about how often I attend a Mass where I must damp down always too often smoldering anger at the disrespect and Solipsism with which liturgical ritual is treated, why he had not pooped up on my radar of late.
He had been very ill for a number of years and moved away from his power base.

Prayers going up for his soul; he was responsible for on of the most evil pieces of advice I had ever read in a Catholish periodical from someone entitled to wear a roman collar.

I boiled down to: your church makes you sad? stop going until someone there makes you happy.

Got that?

The woman poured out her frustrations, saying that the pastor had taken the parish back to a church that she knows nothing about...
In my reply, I wrote: “No, you are not simply to ‘get used to it’. Parishioners need to go elsewhere...
If there are no parishes or other worshipping communities in the vicinity where the pastoral leadership is healthy rather than driven by a narrow ideology, then one simply has to ‘take a vacation’ from the church until the skies finally clear and we are bathed in sunlight once again.” 

How perfect for members of the I'm-Spiritual-But-Not-Religious denomination.....

Actually, it's a kind of Donatism, isn't it? You'd think someone with a "knowledge of [the Church's] history" would know that.... unless he really didn't believe in the sacraments, as a source of supernatural grace.

Which I hope was not true.

May the angels lead him into Paradise....

Non-Catholic Rundown in Need of New Headline Writer

Why, why, why do the secular and non-Catholic press have trouble with this sort of thing?

Non Catholic Rundown has yet another story about a woman who wants to call herself a Catholic priest, (and they wish to indulge her in that desire,) in that Humpty-Dumpty way of pretending that words can mean whatever they want them to mean.

Firstly, I, as the new Managing Editor of NCR take issue with the headline that says this poor woman is "Kansas City's first woman priest" as she is either waaaay behind any number of Episcopalians in KC, (and how unecumencial, how cruel of the headline writer to insult our separated brethren and sistren in this way! remind me to fire him or her next time I go to work,) or, and this is my take on it, NOT A PRIEST AT ALL.

But even if she were a Catholic priest, would we want a shepherd so woefully ignorant of liturgical theology and the precepts of the Church?
Or, perhaps it is the WRITER who is woefully ignorant of liturgical theology and the precepts of the Church... (remind me to fire Dawn Cherie Araujo next time I go in to work.)

Walker says she plans to continue attending Mass at her parish church, St. James, though she will not be taking part in any liturgy.
"I'm not going to take Communion," she told NCR. "I won't in any way compromise the parish, but I attend to still be part of the community and go there for worship on Sunday."

Not taking part in the liturgy? Not taking part?
Have you no clear idea of what participation is?

One does not need to be prancing about to be taking part in the Liturgy.
One does not need to be in the sanctuary to be taking part in the Liturgy.
One does not need to be making any noise to be taking part in the Liturgy.

 (And I say that as a prancing, sanctuary-entering, noisemaker.)

And - hold on to your wigs and keys, Granny - one does not need to receive Communion to be taking part in the Liturgy.

(And I say that as an occasional Communion abstainer.)

Unless this poor lady pops a few sleeping pills and deliberately sleeps through the liturgy, or sticks her fingers in her ears for an hour muttering I can't HEAR you, la la la la! and closes her eyes and thinks of England.... she participates with her presence, her mindful presence.

Is J osephine McKenna Careless With the Truth, Ill-Informed or Does She Know Something We Don't Know

A USCatholic writer claims, against all researchable information, that

Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, has expressed tolerance on a range of issues, famously asking “Who am I to judge?” about gay relationships. 

I am not saying he didn't. I cannot claim to know everything he has ever said, and of course, it is virtually impossible to "prove" a negative.

But hers is one of the most spectacularly inept and agenda driven statements I have ever heard in a sacred or secular, putatively "news" medium.

Gay "relationships"? that's what he was talking about?

Seriously, USCatholic?

Your own d***** periodical reports nothing that he said in relation to relationship.

“I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good. … If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge that person?” 

 Get it, Miss M cKenna?

It seems to be a part of many agendas, which are much more unashamedly sharing the sheets with politics than with the Church, to insist that that Pope Francis supports so-called same-sex "marriage."

So you, Miss M cKenna, by claiming that Francis said gay marriage is, (to paraphrase someone else,) "above his pay grade,)" are either,
1. privy to information not available to the general populace
2. remarkably ignorant of or lazy about facts, (the knowledge of which,  the job in which you are installed I would have thought it your duty to know and disseminate,) or,
3.deliberately engaging in falsehood because of your own agenda, and consequentially, less than fastidious about lying misrepresenting facts to bolster your own position.

So which is it?

You tell me ...

"Conscious Evolution" and Missionary Zeal

Okay, perhaps allowing myself to be a little too contemptuous of, or at least annoyed by jargon, but I think I have a legitimate beef - I think too often neologisms or phrases are a deliberate attempt at obfuscation.
If what you think is controversial, or arguable, or dissenting, or flat wrong in the minds of those with whom you are pretending to be in solidarity and communion -- say it in a way that incomprehensible, or even essentially meaningless in context, giving you plausible deniability when you are called out on your agenda.
(I have discovered, for instance, that if at the beginning of a conversation you seize the buzz-word "uplifting" and describe, say, Gregorian chant thusly, proponents of sacchro/sacro-pop are pretty much incapable of making any claims for the aptness of praise music for liturgical use other than that people "like" it. "Luminous" and "vibrant" are similarly misused all the time.)

RelEd is tailor made for such shenanigans, comprising as it does the twin fields of Faith and Education, both of which have fallen on hard times in the common sense department.

Anyway with all the nattering about the LCWR, or whatever order those letters go in, of late, one reads; and I must admit, the great bugbear of "conscious evolution" seems to me a defensible concept - depending on how slippery its meaning is allowed to be.
It seems to me, as a spiritual concept, it ought to mean something closer to intentional metanoia, (see? I'm good at jargon!) a deliberate and if need be arduous conversion.
Evolution, after all, means little more than change, hopefully for the better.

But then its champions start babbling.

 Cardinal [Muller's]  words... [offer] an opportunity to say a few words about conscious evolution and, more broadly, the mutual engagement of science and religion.
The term “conscious evolution” was not coined by Barbara Marx Hubbard, although she has made significant contributions in understanding the implications of conscious evolution for our age. The term itself emerges from the sciences of evolutionary biology, quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience, among others. The term does not belong to science per se but is descriptive of our species, Homo sapien sapien: evolution brought to self-reflective awareness. To use the words of the renowned Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are the universe become conscious of itself.”

Seriously,  I know you were a great and wise soul, but we are NOT the universe, conscious, comatose or otherwise.
We're just not.
We're a pretty tiny part of it, actually. (Ya know, you'd think those who often seem more involved with saving the planet than saving souls, saving natural resources than saving unborn lives, would bristle at  hinting at such human exceptionalism, but there you have it.)
And then, this.

 We are the ones “who know that we know” (Homo sapien sapiens); hence it is important to reflect on our choices and decisions for the future. Conscious evolution refers to the idea, expressed by Teilhard, that we humans are the arrow of evolution, the crest of the ongoing evolution of the universe. We are co-creators of an unfinished evolutionary process toward more being.

What the hellenism does "more being" mean in this context?
Co-creator? Okay, cooperators with the Creator...
Unfinished evolutionary process?
All right,  every day, in every way, we're getting better and better -- as we journey toward the Kingdom and our final destination.

But "toward more being"?
What is that supposed to mean?
Greater actualization of potential?
But it could mean anything, and therefore means nothing.

I know Teilhard de Chardin contrasts it, ("plus-etre") with "well-being" and perhaps in French but really..... cant and gibberish.

In fact, I think it is dangerous to use such a phrase alongside the word "evolution" in discussion of spiritual growth, since in the paradigm of evolution of species, yeah, the objective is more- rather than well- being, nature does not care about our happiness or goodness or comfort or beauty or Godliness - the objective of all things in nature is simply to reproduce as proliferately, (profligately?) as possible, to broadcast their genetic material, to blanket the universe with their  DNA, to spread seed -- with an utter disregard for any other creature's existence except as it can be exploited to ones own advantage.

So basically, with Conscious Evolution we could be talking either ecological hegemony, (which seems at odds with the tree-hugger reputation of most of its adherents,)  or, if we mean spiritual evolution, such zealous and triumphant proselytization that it leads to universal conversion, which again, seems to be against the spirit of ecumenism as understood b those seem adherents.

Universal.
Oh.
Um... Catholic.

Hmmm.... maybe they are on to something.

What do they say, It's a ill wind, (or rather...

.. an ill recession,) that completely blows?

Or something like that.

A missive in my email inbox informs me:

The net revenue from [Voice of the Faithful's] end-of-fiscal-year appeal in May was less than half of what we projected.

God's Vegan?

Seriously, the National catholic Reporter wants to get people wound up that a priest who thinks, and  teaches that "God taught people to fast and eat only vegetables; that no one on earth can forgive another person’s sins; and that human beings could not rise after death."

Someone in this priest's Vietnamese diocese reports one problem might be the "poor quality of seminary education."


Ya think?

But on to more important Catholic matters, NcR, like Reiki!

When you get really old, you can't always tell the difference between sunrise and sunset

The National catholic Reporter has no problem trumpeting the achievements of, or publishing the writings of, those seeking actively excommunication, who claim to perceive a "new dawn".

With almost 200 Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a renewed priestly ministry is flowering in 10 countries. Catholics worldwide are ready for a new model of church led by women and men. In the United States, approximately 150 women priests are serving in 60 inclusive liturgical communities and providing sacraments.

These activists seem obsessed with demanding the approval of a group of people and of an institution for which, for whom, and for whose doctrines they have  contempt.
Why?
Why Roman Catholic Womenpriests?
What authority do they recognize that would make the word "Roman" a part of the name of their catholic groups?

I noted last weekend that contrary to expectations when one attends most parochial or diocesan functions, where even including priests attendance is usually at least 3/4 female, CMAA functions, or any gathering that is serious about the Faith and the Liturgy seem to tilt a tiny bit toward the male sex, and  slant drastically younger.
Roman catholic Womenpriests, as an organization, seems.... a bit delicate.

  I myself am old and decrepit, and have  fondness for no-iron garments, (the purveyors of fashion don't fool me, by the way, I know polyester double-knit when I see it, even if you want to call it "ponte,") so don't think I am mocking the elderly, merely pointing out that... well, time may not be on their side.

Integrity, Faithfulness.... ?

I am a member of Voice of the Faithful, get their newsletters, keep up with what they are doing, etc.
Apparently having integrity is the same as being obstinate; and faithful means "willfully breaking communion with..."