Why are saints considered luxurious?

I've often wondered this: why do we associate saints' names with luxury? I was just looking at an advertisement in the NY Times for the St. Regis Hotel and they are offering timeshare opportunities. The place, of course, is extraordinarily luxurious. Along with the timeshare, you get your own butler and all the service money can buy.

But who was St. Regis? Actually, the closest I came to finding a St. Regis was St. John Francis Regis, a French Jesuit of the 17th century. He was a zealous priest who especially went in search of women of the night. He was, of course, not looking for his own pleasure, but working to bring them back to the Lord. He successfully converted many of them (oftentimes at his own peril as jealous johns and pernicious pimps threatened his life on more than one occasion) and even established centers where they could have honest employment.

He was zealous in his own mortification. He always slept on the bare floor and his consistent supper was a bowl of milk and some fruit. That certainly doesn't go along with my idea of luxury.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, the most luxurious hotel is The St. Paul. While it's not quite the St. Regis, it would certainly pass as a high-class place.

But who was St. Paul? Well, we know him as one zealous for the Gospel, one who was beaten, whipped, run out of town on more than one occasion, shipwrecked, spending a day and a night adrift on the open sea, left for dead, constantly on the move until he was imprisoned, etc. Being that the City of St. Paul was at one time named Pig's Eye, it's easy to see why a hotel would prefer a saint's name over the porker moniker.

But I ask my question again -- why do we associate saints with luxury? Besides the royal saints, no saint that I know of was a person of luxury. And even the royals did penance on a regular basis and provided for the poor out of their own means. For instance, after St. Elizabeth of Hungary's husband died, she donned the simple garments of a Franciscan tertiary and gave away her own money to care for the poor in hospitals and to give them food.

In other words, being a saint doesn't entail luxury. "The birds have nests, the foxes have lairs, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head," Jesus told someone who wanted to follow Him. He also said, "Take up your cross and follow in My footsteps." The last I checked, the cross wasn't exactly a place of sumptuous recreation.

It's hard to see the St. Regis offering their customers bare wooden floors with barely heated rooms as an option. And I don't think they or The St. Paul will open their doors to the poor and homeless who, no doubt, wander the streets just outside their doors. In fact, The St. Paul is across the street from Rice Park, where many homeless congregate during the day and night. It would require a direct intervention from God for the owner to even think about opening its doors to one of them.

I wonder if this is a Catholic doing? Could it be that since our great cathedrals are named after saints and the world considers them to be places of luxury, that they then feel free to name luxury hotels after them? Or perhaps it comes from innkeepers in old Catholic countries naming inns after saints?

Whatever the way it happened, in my mind it makes for a confusing situation. Any thoughts?

I want to sue Al Gore

One Dr. David Suzuki, apparently a well-known scientist in Canada, has proposed twice now that politicians who do not work on legislation to curb global warming should be arrested and jailed for "an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."

His spokesman claims it was a joke, a statement of frustration, but it's the second time he's made it, according to the National Post.

As a joke, I want to sue Al Gore and his ilk, including Dr. Suzuki. You see, they keep promising global warming. But I live in Minnesota, and so far, I haven't seen a whole lot of evidence for global warming, especially this winter. We've had a whole lot of snow and a whole lot of cold. I've never seen as much hoarfrost as I have this winter. We're about to get another blast of Arctic air that is going to plunge temperatures down below zero again. After all, we've been enjoying the relative balm of the 20's this last week-and-a-half after the blizzard we got at the end of January.

But I say once again, Gore and Suzuki have been promising global warming. Well, where is it? If the earth is supposed to be warming up, why aren't there palm trees in my front yard?! I want palm trees! I want to plant my garden in February, not April or May!I want a winter when I don't have to worry about how much propane is in my tank, or if I can get my car out of the driveway or if the car is going to slide off the side of a hill because of ice!

But that's not happening, so can I sue them?

Why I will never vote for a Mormon as president

I know that very soon after I post this, those who have "Mormon" for a Google search term will find this posting and try to start in on me. But I'm blocking comments on this posting. I don't have the time to deal with replies, but I have been wanting to say this for some time now. However, what I say is not said with any personal animosity toward anyone at all (except, perhaps, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young), least of all Mitt Romney whom I have never met and have only the most remote connections to.

That said, if I can help it, I will never vote for a Mormon as president. Now there are probably Catholics out there who will pounce on me and tell me that the Constitution says we can't have a religious test for anyone who holds public office. Amen to that. But that's a governmental regulation for those who hold official posts. It isn't meant for individuals like myself who are using their best judgments to choose the best candidate possible.

So without further ado, here are some reasons why I will not vote for a Mormon:

1) Mormon theology is (to be blunt) screwy.

The reason this is important is because how a person believes guides how a person behaves. Now I know that many people will throw the "Catholic" politicians like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry at me. And still I say, yes, as a person believes, so a person behaves. Kennedy, Kerry, et al, do not believe that what the Catholic Church teaches really binds their consciences, so they are free to do as they wish. And they do as they wish.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is by all accounts a faithful Mormon. That is, of course, better than being one who claims to be Mormon but does not live the faith or who claims to be Catholic but says the Pope can go to hell. But that he is a faithful Mormon should give us pause because Mormonism's doctrines are strange.

• They believe that God the Father - who is the god of this planet, not the God who created the universe and who has no beginning and no end, as Christianity has always taught - had sexual intercourse with Mary in order to beget Jesus.
• They believe that men who are faithful Mormons will, after death, get to have their own planets over which they are gods and that they will each have a bunch of spirit wives with whom they will generate spirit children, and then the created people on that planet will be expected to have sex in order to incarnate those spirit children as happens here on Earth.
• They believe that "as we are now, God once was. As God is now, so we will become."
• When a couple are married in a temple ritual, the woman is given a secret name. After death, the only way that she can make it into the highest heavens, the highest happiness, is if her husband calls her by this secret name.

I could go further, but this should demonstrate perfectly well that Mormonism not only isn't a Christian belief, but the strangeness of their beliefs can lead to some strange behaviors.

I for one don't want a president in office who believes that a woman's highest happiness depends entirely on her getting married and her husband calling on her secret name after death.

Or who believes that he will someday be the god of his own planet.

2) Mormonism is part business, part religion

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were Americans through and through. The religion which they developed is an American religion. Their connections are all American.

That may seem obvious and pointless, but consider this: the Mormon church owns many huge businesses and it has many faithful members who either own or are chairmen/CEO's of huge businesses. To name a few: Ryder, La Quinta, Franklin/Covey, Iomega, American Express, SkyWest, Tropical Sportswear, Sports Capital Partners, Cadence Design, Five Star Quality Care (based in Newton, Mass., of which state Mr. Romney was once governor), Headwaters, Central Pacific Bank, Black and Decker. Others hold influential positions like CFO or are presidents of key operations of major corporations. Oh, and did I mention Marriott and JetBlue?

This doesn't include the rather lengthy list of businesses owned directly by the church itself, businesses like Beneficial Life, Bonneville Broadcasting, and just about everything with the name "Deseret" in it. The Mormon church actually owns the largest ranch in the country, which isn't in the mountain West somewhere, but outside of Orlando. Their agribusiness companies are huge. In fact, TIME magazine said that if Mormonism would be considered a business, it would fall in the middle of the Fortune 500, somewhere between Nike and Union Carbide.

Along with this, one must take into consideration that all faithful Mormons are required by their religion to tithe 10 percent of their incomes to the church. If they don't do that, they find themselves on the outs with their local leaders. So all these corporate leaders who are making loads of money are giving 10 percent of their personal income to the church. And who's to say they're not doing that with their corporations' money as well?

In other words, Mormonism isn't like other religions. It's part business, part religion. When the church itself owns at least 23 major companies, one must seriously question what the primary purpose of its existence is.

3) Influence doesn't only come from Salt Lake

When JFK ran for president, we all know what happened and what the accusation was. Many were expecting that he would be taking orders from Rome and from the bishops in the U.S. Of course his speech Houston cleared that up -- he wasn't going to take orders from anyone except himself.

Some people say that Romney's recent speech did the same thing. But there's a huge difference between Catholicism and Mormonism. (Well, there are actually dozens of huge differences between the two, but we'll stick to discussing politics right now.) With Catholicism, you have a very clearly defined hierarchy that is separated from the laity. The clergy are celibate, and they are supported by donations from the faithful, donations which are voluntarily given.

With Mormonism, however, there is no separate hierarchy. All "bishops" and "elders" are laypeople. They may work for the church itself, but most work at regular jobs. That means that the president of Franklin/Covey, for instance, could just as easily be the president of his local stake or the bishop of his ward. In fact, he could even be on the highest levels of the church, acting as counselor to the president, Gordon B. Hinkley, who is the so-called prophet, seer and revelator.

In other words, it is not inconceivable that a President Romney or one of his staff would consult with a so-called apostle of the Mormon church, for whatever reason.

In fact, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on 30 December that former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who is now the U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services, held meetings with his staff to figure out how they could get Mormon doctrines implemented into Utah state policy. (Personally, I'm not sure why that was needed. The state legislature is around 97 percent Mormon and they vote on their beliefs.) Leavitt says he hasn't done that on the federal level, but there's really nothing to prevent him from doing so.

Nor is there anything to prevent a Mormon president from doing the same thing.

This story from AP also shows that Mormon business owner can have an influence over Mr. Romney. (Let's not forget that he is the one who saved the Salt Lake Olympics when they were under the cloud of a corruption scandal.) These business owners live Mormon theology daily and they themselves work to see their faith grow in influence. And since these guys have the money and the connections, their influence is very strong. That it would extend to the president of the United States is a scary thought.

4) Race

Jason Riley at the Wall Street Journal wrote a superb column about the problem of race in the Mormon church. It is well-known that in their scriptures (i.e., The Book of Mormon, Doctrines and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price), Mormons look upon dark-skinned people as inferior to whites. This is written in their documents as well and was enforced until a lawsuit that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 suddenly prompted a "revelation" that blacks could be part of the church hierarchy.

That racism persists to this day, Riley says, and I wouldn't doubt it a bit. For just as Mormons still cling to polygamy (just try to criticize that practice in front of someone who descends from a polygamous line) as the pure way to go despite the ban that was placed on it so that Utah could enter the Union, so racism is not easily eradicated after being told for more than a century that whites are the superior race and non-whites are cursed by God Himself.

5) The Mormon church is not 100 percent pro-life.

Despite the image to the contrary, Mormons are not pro-life people. I got a lesson in this back in 1997 when I went to the Roe v Wade rally at the Utah state capitol on January 22. I was expecting the nearly 5,000 people that I see annually at the Minnesota state capitol and was stunned when I got there and there was no one around. I went inside and all I saw was, at most, a couple hundred people gathered under the rotunda, most of them Catholic. Someone explained to me that Mormon theology actually does allow for abortions. In fact, I found out that at that time, Utah had the highest rate of abortions among married women in the country (I don't know if that still holds true.) The reasons for the abortion have to be serious, but they still do allow for the taking of innocent human life.

Conclusion
These are but a few of my reasons for not voting for a Mormon as president. If I had to choose between two Mormons for a legislative race, I wouldn't have too much difficulty with that because legislators aren't executives who have things like executive privilege within their grasp; they can be held in check by fellow legislators. But because of his executive powers, a president is a different story and requires far more consideration than legislators.

Is Romney better than Hillary? Certainly. And in that kind of contest, I'm not sure what I would do. But while we're in the primary season, I am not going to give any kind of consideration to Mitt Romney at all.

Kiera Knightly raps

My wife is part of a chat group that discusses teaching history for home schoolers. They were talking about using films to teach history and someone brought up the 2005 Pride & Prejudice with Kiera Knightly playing Lizzie. It's a lousy film in many respects, most of all in fidelity to the book, but also in execution.

Here's what one lady in the group said about it, though: "The 2005 Pride & Prejudice has grown on me--I remember making all sorts of grrr comments to my dh when we attended it in the theaters, but we do like it now."

And here's the response of Maria Rioux, the group's moderator (slightly edited):

That's called desensitization. Entertain something long enough, and you'll start to find it acceptable, regardless of objective merit or the lack thereof.

Next thing we know, you'll be telling us about this great new rap song that seems a little jarring at first, but is, in fact, musically as complex and beautiful as Mozart's 40th. You just have to train your ear by rapping on it. This happens naturally because, when first forced to listen to any rap music, people have a tendency to bang their heads against the closest wall...which, happily, is the very thing that adapts the ear to relentless pounding.

The data are not yet complete on whether the concomitant mental trauma affects the ability to make a judgement. Study subjects seem to be having trouble expressing themselves coherently in English.

Touché, Maria!

Happily eating crow

Back in June, I made the prediction that Bishop Samuel Aquila of the Diocese of Fargo was to be named coadjutor of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis within short order. I was wrong and I apologize.

But though my prediction was wrong, both in person and in time, I am quite happy to say that I really don't care that I'm wrong. Today, the Holy See announced that Bishop John Nienstedt of New Ulm has been appointed as coadjutor. This is great news.

In October of 2005, I had the pleasure of having dinner with the new archbishop at the Catholic Medical Association Conference in Portland, Ore. (see his talk here). I also had a chance to meet Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix at that same conference.

In an elevator ride, I told Bishop Olmsted how impressed I was with what he was doing with all the obstacles he had to overcome. But he would hear none of it. The difficulties he encountered, he said, were nowhere near as tough as what other bishops had. That surprised me given the fact that his immediate successor had been arrested, charged and convicted of a felony, that the former vicar general (who, by the way, had established a very popular youth program) had been arrested for sexual misconduct, and that the bishop had open rebellion on his hands involving a sizable number of priests.

But no, he said, those problems were nothing. He had priests and seminarians and the diocese had a fair amount of money. Compare that to someone like Bishop Nienstedt, he said, who had no money, no seminarians, hardly any priests (42 priests for 82 parishes), and where respect for the priesthood had gone out the window in favor or laywomen or nuns running the parishes (my words, not his). Now that, he said, was someone to look up to.

Archbishop Nienstedt has not had it very easy given the way his diocese was left in shambles by his predecessor, Bishop Raymond Lucker. But in the six years he's been there, he has begun to change it without much open rancor. Of course, the National Catholic Reporter went after him since Bishop Lucker was one of NCR's patron saints. But other than that, he's been able to carry out his ministry with a fair amount of calm.

Moving from the most rural diocese in the country to one with somewhere between 646,000 and 830,000 Catholics (depending on who you talk to -- the new coadjutor says the former, the StarTribune says the latter and the Pioneer Press says 750,000) and being made the Metropolitan of the province is quite a change in responsibility. May God give him the strength and courage he's going to need to handle all of his duties and the opposition he will necessarily face when he carries them out.

In defense of the CMA

Over on the Whispers in the Loggia blog, Rocco Palmo noted an article in Newsday (scroll down to the one entitled "More from the Fall Classic") about a Long Island pastor who pulled a brochure from his parish church's rack. Why Newsday thought it was worthy of a story is beyond me.

Oh, wait a minute. The brochure is entitled "Homosexuality and Hope" and was authored and published by the Catholic Medical Association. That's why a pastor removing it is so important (though he did it after only two people complained about it). Apparently, he also had the support of the Bishop, William Murphy.

The Newsday article claims that the priest and diocese thought the content of brochure contained a lot of speculation and that its theories on the development of same-sex attraction were outdated.

Interesting.

The people who wrote that brochure are all professionals working in the field of psychiatry and psychology and have many years of experience of dealing with people who struggle with same-sex attraction. They have studied, from a Catholic perspective, what the causes of that attraction are. Their conclusions, based on their lived experience and success in treating these patients, indicate that these unwanted attractions are not genetic, but lie in various other sources, including difficult parent-child relationships, sexual abuse, and/or difficult relations with same-sex peers while growing up.

Simply because two people complained about the brochure doesn't mean it doesn't belong in the rack nor that it was in error. Either the brochure presents the truth or it doesn't. So rather than saying its theories were outdated, they should have said (if this is what they are claiming) that it was untrue.

However, I don't think that's what they were claiming. I think they're like too many priests and bishops who lack backbone and were afraid of a couple of people's reactions, who would then turn to the media who would write the pastor and bishop up as the ultimate intolerants, and they would, in turn, experience a lot of grief. (Something about "Do not be afraid to suffer hardship for the sake of the Gospel" comes to mind at this point.) So rather than saying "it's untrue," they make themselves more media friendly by stating, "it's outdated."

But the last time I checked, truth is timeless. If it isn't, then the bishop and pastor are wearing some pretty old-fashioned clothing and leading people in an ancient ritual that has absolutely no relevance for today.

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Out of the mouths of babes

A conversation between son number 3 (4-years-old) and daughter number 1 (17):

S-3: Will we still be here [in our house] when we go to heaven?

D-1: No, we'll be in heaven.

S-3: You mean with Jesus?

D-1: Yes.

S-3: [Emits gasp of great excitement] Can we bring our light sabres?

Reuterville's misleading again

Reuters today published a story about Pope Benedict's speech at the Lateran opening the academic year. Here's a quote from the story as it appeared in the Khaleej Times Online:

Like his predecessor Pope John Paul II, Benedict is against stem cell technology, which researchers say could help cure serious illnesses but the Church opposes it because it often relies on cells from embryo tissue.

This, of course, is nonsense. Benedict doesn't oppose all stem cell technology, only that which comes from embryonic stem cells. Notice the set-up -- bad pope ("Benedict is against stem cell technology") vs. good scientists ("which researchers say could help cure serious illnesses").

And then comes this zinger:

The Vatican teaches that human life begins at conception.

As if the Vatican made that up all by themselves. They totally discount the fact that human embryologists, those scientists whose study is solely the human embryo, have established their own scientific nomenclature and teach "that human life begins at conception," i.e. fertilization, when the sperm penetrates the egg. (It strikes me, though, that the reason they probably discount it is that they most likely don't know it because they haven't taken the time to ask human embryologists about it.)

Whoever wrote this is being deliberately misleading. How like Reuters.

Home Is the Soldier From War

Here's another one from my daughter's collection. She wrote this last year when my father died and then gave it to my wife's family when my father-in-law died.

Home Is the Soldier From War

Home is the soldier, home from war.
Hard was his fight, now it is o’er
Well was it fought, now he is resting.
Now at peace, God he is praising.
He will suffer no more.
Home is the soldier from war.

Home is the soldier, home from war.
Happier than ever before,
buried with honor and our love,
he is resting with God above.
Sorrow he knows no more.
Home is the soldier from war.

Home is the soldier, home from war.
The flag of his country flies o’er,
o’er the grave where he is sleeping.
He served that flag without resting.
Now his fighting is o’er
Home is the soldier from war.

He has fought the good fight.
He has finished the race.
Now in eternal light,
he sees God face to face.
His exile is o’er.
Home is the soldier from war.

By: Regina M. Szyszkiewicz

Daddy the wasp killer

This was written by my daughter for my birthday a couple of years ago. I've been meaning to post it and am only now getting around to it.

It originated from an incident in a bathroom. A wasp appeared there and I was called to take care of it. As I got the swatter, I said to my daughter, "Daddy, the wasp killer, huh?" Well, that was all her poet's mind needed to get her going...

Daddy the Wasp Killer

Armed for the deadly combat,
Daddy firmly grasped the swatter.
Under his breath he muttered, “drat,”
Daddy, the deadly wasp killer.

From behind the bathroom door,
came a “buzz” from the buzzing fighter.
Daddy looked fiercer than before.
Daddy, the dreaded wasp killer.

He swung that door open wide,
(louder buzzed the buzzing fighter)
and crossed the floor with one stride.
Daddy, the fearsome wasp killer.

Then with a “crash,” “bang,” “wack,” “swat,”
Daddy wielded the swatter.
Daddy’s fury was boiling hot.
Daddy, the awful wasp killer.

Then, victory for Daddy!
He had killed the buzzing fighter!
From the bathroom, triumphantly,
came Daddy the wasp killer.

By: Regina M. Szyszkiewicz

Clinton and bin Laden

Actually, what the folks at ABC presented in "The Path to 9/11" probably isn't too far off the mark. What was supposed to be in the broadcast version and what got cut was the sequence where Clinton decides not to go after Osama bin Laden, and then there was an immediate cut to Clinton in the witness stand saying, "I did not have sex with that woman."

Critics have decried this as overblown, but anyone who has had any kind of addiction can tell you that it's not far off at all; in fact, it's quite logical. Clinton was having an affair with Monica. His mind wasn't on the protection of the country but on the pleasures he could have with the intern.

That this is what happens in these situations is borne out by the fact that this kind of thing occurs all the time -- people become obsessed with sex, porn, drugs, alcohol, gambling or whatever and everything else in life goes by the wayside. The stories are too numerous to recount, so I don't think that's necessary. There's plenty of evidence that this happens on a regular basis.

That it could also happen to the former White House occupant is, for some reason, an idea that's repugnant for some people to think about. So what if he was a Rhodes scholar or a Yale graduate or had any other number of accolades and privileges? All of that doesn't matter when it comes down to the raw desire of seeking the next pleasurable tryst. All of those things go by the wayside as do considerations about propriety and decency or about what other priorities are more important than getting his zipper down while he's in the room with her.

Going to the dogs

Ed Peters sent out this piece to folks like me, "uberbloggers" as he calls us. Seems a priest in New Jersey can't get along without his dogs and even brings them to Mass and lets them sit unleashed in the sanctuary.

When this came in, I was on the phone with my good friend, Jeff Gardner, my partner at Catholic Radio International (check it out). So I told him about it and got to the part where Ed says, "Although the apparently untethered canines 'have been known to growl' at late-comers," when Jeff says, "Right -- now all we have to do is teach them to sniff out those who aren't in a state of grace!"

And then when I told him that, "Fr. Scurti assures us that his dogs 'don't remove the sacredness of the liturgy at all,'" Jeff says, "This gives new meaning to 'I shall be healed.'"

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

They've made the connection in Australia

As I have talked about elsewhere on this blog, there is a connection between the lower number of children being made by Catholics and the fact that Catholic schools are closing, a connection the bishops of this country are unwilling to confront with any real boldness and leadership.

In Australia, the independent schools have made the connection and are at least looking at the situation. When we in the U.S. will acknowledge it -- if ever -- is anyone's guess.

Yours truly in the L.A. Times

Responding to a column in the Los Angeles Times, I wrote the following letter. I certainly didn't expect it to get published, but there it is.

Abstinence is the best prevention against virus
July 2, 2006

Re "Ideology won't prevent cancer," Opinion, June 29

Julie Kay's column on the human papilloma virus vaccine was inane at best. Instead of engaging the argument that abstinence before marriage is the best prevention against the virus, and therefore cervical cancer, she dismisses it as religious, and therefore nutty. However, the logic is simple, scientific and elementary. It goes like this: Human papilloma virus is a sexually transmitted disease. One does not get a sexually transmitted disease if one doesn't have sex.

Therefore, the way to avoid this virus is by not having sex until marriage — and hope one's spouse has followed the same logic.

This has nothing to do with religion or religious views. It is a simple and scientific fact and can be followed by anyone. To say otherwise is demonstrably false.

THOMAS A. SZYSZKIEWICZ

Peterson, Minn.

An oxymoronic priest

So this guy is going to combat AIDS? While he's openly gay? Right. And the Mob is going to support the Vatican's call to combat the trafficking of weapons.

Archbishop Burke's additional assignment

As if Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis didn't have enough to do already, the Holy Father has laid on him another task. It was announced today from the Holy See that he has been appointed to be a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

I heard the other day that he was in Rome for the pallium ceremony, most likely because of his good friend, Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston. It's obvious, then, that he had other meetings while he was there and was asked to be part of the Signatura. (As an aside, he probably also celebrated his birthday (June 30th) and the anniversary of his priestly ordination (June 29th) at his favorite restaurant, a great place on the outskirts of Rome right near the catacombs. But for the life of me, I can't remember its name.)

This is high recognition of Archbishop Burke's canonical skills. His resume includes working for five years as Defender of the Bond at the Signatura, which is really the Church's highest court (outside the person of the Holy Father himself, of course). In fact, he was the first American to be appointed to that post. He was appointed to be the Bishop of La Crosse by Pope John Paul II when he was working in that office, and then ordained a bishop by the Pope himself on January 6, 1995.

Archbishop Burke told me when I first met and interviewed him for Inside the Vatican back in the Fall of 1998, that while he was Defender of the Bond, he only had about a handful of cases where he actually defended the bond. The Signatura oversees the world's canonical courts and when marriage cases reach there, rather than the Roman Rota, that means the cases are being appealed on technical or procedural grounds, and not on the contents of the case. Those kinds of marriage cases are few and far between. So he primarily worked on really difficult non-marital canonical cases, cases that had been in the making for a long time and where the parties were deeply entrenched in their mutually hostile positions. For this work, he is still well-regarded in the Vatican and has many, many friends there.

I think it's striking that after 11 years of not being at the Signatura, the Holy Father still recognizes Archbishop Burke's abilities and thinks so highly of them that he would appoint him to that post. There are some who think that what he said about John Kerry and the ensuing flap during the 2004 elections caused him to become out of favor with Rome, but that is obviously not the case.

This is also vindication for his handling of the St. Stanislaus case (see posting below). Apparently the powers that be in the Holy See think that he went about the case just fine and that it didn't matter that the excommunications came not too long before Christmas, as some in St. Louis complained.

But when it comes to polticians, we now have an interesting situation. Archbishop Wuerl is in D.C. and is dead set against denying Communion to Catholic pols who vote for and vocally support abortion. Archbishop Burke, on the other hand, interpreted Canon 915 to mean that someone like John Kerry can and should be denied Communion. Yet, it is Archbishop Burke who will now be able to do something should a case work through the Catholic Church's bureaucracy and land itself in the Signatura's case pile.

I also find it interesting that there was in Rome at one time this trio of archbishops -- Burke, DiNardo and Wuerl -- for the same occasion. Burke and DiNardo are friends. DiNardo and Wuerl know each other since they are both originally from Pittsburgh. (Actually, DiNardo was born in Steubenville, Ohio, but then his family moved 45 miles east to grow up in Pittsburgh and was ordained for that diocese.) Could there have been some discussion between the three of them in a quieter moment? Perhaps we might see something good come later on.

Update
See Ed Peters' entry on this at his blog.

Update 2
Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirms Ed's observations in this report. However, his description of the Defender of the Bond as being similar to the U.S. Solicitor General is inaccurate. The Defender of the Bond has the responsibility of presenting to the Court, whether it be a diocesan tribunal, metropolitan tribunal, the Roman Rota or the Signatura, "everything which reasonably can be brought forth against nullity or dissolution" (canon 1432). Since, as I said above, the Defender at the Signatura doesn't have a whole lot of marriage or ordination cases to defend, he has additional responsibilities assigned to him, which may or may not be similar to those of the Solicitor General (I simply don't know). However, they are in addition to the office of Defender, not part of it.

Excommunications in St. Louis

This posting comes well after the fact as these excommunications took place in December of 2005. This article appeared in the February 2006 issue of Catholic World Report, however it wasn't put on the web. I think it has some import, so I'm making it available here.


Excommunications in St. Louis
By Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz

It’s not often that seven Catholics are publicly excommunicated from the Church on a single day. So when Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis proclaimed “with heavy heart” in December that the six members of the board of the civil corporation of St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in St. Louis and the priest they hired to be pastor were excommunicated for an act of schism, it made national news.

Father Marek Bozek, a priest of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau and a native of Poland, left his post as associate pastor of St. Agnes Cathedral in his diocese against the express wishes of Bishop Joseph Leibrecht, and took up an offer from the board of directors of St. Stan’s Parish to become their pastor. By this act, both the board and the priest committed an act of schism and ruptured their communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

This was not what Archbishop Burke wanted. Pundits have wagged their tongues over the controversies that follow this shepherd wherever he goes. From his decisions to build a multi-million dollar shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Diocese of La Crosse, to his ban of CROP Walk there, forbidding that diocese’s AIDS Ministry from participating in a fund-raising walk with gay-rights groups, telling pro-abortion Catholic politicians after years of dialogue with them that they could not receive Communion until they publicly repented their position, and then when he moved to St. Louis telling Senator John Kerry that he could not receive Communion in his archdiocese while the presidential contender was campaigning there and putting the members of the St. Stanislaus board under interdict, Archbishop Burke is not one to shrink from difficult decisions.

In an interview with this writer back in June of 2004 during the heat of the presidential election, he said, rather bemusedly, “I always seem to be getting myself into trouble.” But this controversy with St. Stan’s was not one he relished or found in any way humorous. In fact, in his weekly column in the St. Louis Review, he wrote, “I write, with heavy heart, about a situation which I, as bishop, had hoped I would never have to address.”

St. Stanislaus Kostka, on the city’s north side, is in an anomalous situation. It was founded in 1880 as a regular ethnic parish to serve the Polish immigrants in the area. But the historical circumstances of the time would lead to then-Archbishop Peter Kenrick, who was toward the end of his life and, according to local historians, not in the soundest of mind, to forge a compromise with the parish.

At that time in the nation’s history, the Catholic Church was coming out of the throes of trusteeism, the movement that put “jus patronatus” in the hands of the common laity. The concept of “jus patronatus” came from Old Europe where royalty or nobles established churches or dioceses and had the right to name the priest or bishop to those. To use modern American terms, whoever paid for it had the naming rights.

When the emigres came here in the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought this concept with them and applied to themselves in the land where no nobility existed. They paid for the purchase of the land and the building of the church, schools and convents, so, they figured, they had the right to own it themselves, not the Church. (See Catholic World Report, October 2005)
At the same time this was going on, Polish immigrants were feeling slighted by their primarily Irish and German bishops. This caused feelings of resentment and bitterness to rise up and eventually brought about the schism in Pennsylvania that resulted in the rise of the Polish National Catholic Church. Numerous Polish parishes around the country were either going or threatening to go the same way.

Enter St. Stanislaus Parish in St. Louis, Missouri in 1891. Archbishop Peter Kenrick was most likely facing a similar situation, according to local historians. It is quite likely that this parish was wanting to break for the PNCC, though no one today is fully sure of the circumstances of the time. Many believe the archbishop was not in the soundest frame of mind at the time a deed was signed and a lay board of trustees took control of the buildings and land. He still retained control over the naming of priests to the parish and the pastor was the chairman of the board. But the laity now had a firm grip on what happened there.

Through the years, there had been various moves to try to bring this parish into line with canon law, according to Msgr. Vernon Gardin, the vicar general for the archdiocese. “It was still an irregular situation back then,” he said, and during the 40's and 50's the chancellor tried to do something, but was unsuccessful. It was let go during the 60's, but it arose again in the 1970's from the most unlikely source – Pope John Paul II.

At that time, he was still Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, but he was visiting the U.S. in 1969. Being that this was a Polish parish, he stopped in to visit and celebrate Mass. That gave the parishioners a shot in the arm to believe their stand on the case was correct. Then when he was elected pope in 1978, that gave them even greater hope.

But that hope would eventually be dashed. As the board began to perceive that things were not going the way they wanted them to go, they made unilateral changes to their by-laws in 2001 and again in 2004. The original by-laws had the archbishop assigning the pastor, who would also serve as president of the board, and gave him the ability to appoint the members of the board. But the first change had the members of the board elected by the parish, an election that was then confirmed by the archbishop. The second change completely wrote the archbishop out of the picture – the word doesn’t even appear in the document – and there is also no mention of the parish being part of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Instead, the document refers to the “competent ecclesiastical authority” but does not define who that is. On top of that, the pastor is no longer the top member of the board. That falls to the chairperson who is, according to the by-laws, a chief executive officer.

The 2001 changes are what caused then-Archbishop Justin Rigali to start raising the bar on the board and asking for a regularization of their situation. But he got nowhere with them before he was transferred to Philadelphia. So it fell to his successor, Archbishop Burke, to deal with it.
His first meeting with the board did not go well. He was told that they were in charge. The archbishop decided to call for a meeting with the parishioners, which turned out to be worse than the board meeting, with parishioners publicly verbally abusing him. It didn’t help that board members brought in some of his detractors from when he was in La Crosse.

It was a month after this parish meeting that the board revised the by-laws again.

Archbishop Burke was not pleased. Five months later, he temporarily moved the pastor, Father Michael Bene, and the apostolate to the Polish community to another parish, and in July of last year permanently moved the apostolate to St. Agatha Parish. That left St. Stanislaus without priest.

The board appealed that decision to the Congregation for the Clergy. But the dicastery ruled against them in rather strong terms. “Through careful and premeditated revisions of the By-Laws of the civil corporation,” wrote the Congregation’s secretary, Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, “you have attempted to make the role of the pastor impotent, attempted to wrest control from the local Ordinary, and attempted to transform St. Stanislaus Parish into an entity which has no resemblance to a parish as envisioned by either the tradition or current law of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Still, the board was undaunted. All throughout this struggle, they have portrayed Archbishop Burke as a man eager to get his hands on the property and the estimated $9 million in assets the parish has in order to pay for sexual abuse claims. That’s an image the secular press has engendered by portraying this as a struggle over property rights. But that’s not the case at all, said Msgr. Gardin. As well as being Vicar General, he’s also the vicar for finances and is in charge of the Finance Committee, which he emphasized is no mere rubber-stamp group. There is the overall committee and a whole bunch of subcommittees as well, meaning, he said, he has to go to 32 meetings a year. “There are scores of laypeople on these committees” who probe every single aspect of the archdiocesan funding. In short, he said, “We don’t need the money and we don’t want the money.”

In fact, there are serious questions about the parish’s financial disclosures. While the parish is claiming $9 million in assets, the archdiocese asserts that they have not done a publicly available audit. And the area of town they’re in is not the best, according to Msgr. Gardin, so the land valuation is probably not as high as they claim.

Finally, in February of 2005, the archbishop put the board under the canonical penalty of interdict. This is not a type of excommunication, but rather a penalty meant to try and bring the offenders to repentance.

Enter Father Bozek...
After the interdict not much happened. Until the second week of Advent, that is. That’s when the board announced that it had hired a priest from the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in southern Missouri to be their new pastor.

Father Marek Bozek is originally from Poland. How he got to be ordained in Missouri is a matter of some dispute. He had originally been studying for the Pallotine Fathers and then for the Archdiocese of Warmia. However, he did not complete his studies at either place. The former rector of the seminary in Warmia, Father Jan Guzowski, said that Father Bozek was dismissed from the seminary for homosexual activity. But Father Bozek disputed that with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“We thought he was homosexual,” Father Guzowski told the P-D. “‘We had several problems with him. He said he wasn't homosexual, but we had certain proof that this wasn't true.’ Asked what proof, Guzowski said that other seminarians told him so.”

The P-D quoted Father Bozek as saying that he has “a recommendation from Archbishop [Edmund] Piszcz which says I left by my own request.”

Interestingly, the Archdiocese of Hartford had a priest from the Warmia Archdiocese working for them for a short period who was arrested for sexually abusing a teenage girl. He has served his jail term and is currently awaiting deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. According to news reports in the New Britain Herald, Hartford claimed they had a letter of recommendation from Warmia, a claim Warmia disputed. Calls to Hartford seeking clarification were not returned.

A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau told CWR they had received three letters of recommendation for Father Bozek from the Archdiocese of Warmia when he was applying to study for the diocese. She would not release them for review, however, saying they composed part of his confidential personnel file. She did say, however, that there was “no mention of any homosexual preferences or practices” in any of the letters.

A request for information from the Pallotine Fathers was not answered.

...Exuent the St. Stan’s board and Father Bozek
These actions – Father Bozek leaving his parish assignment and the board of St. Stan’s hiring him – left the Ordinaries of these dioceses with little choice. Upon leaving, Bishop Leibrecht suspended Father Bozek’s priestly faculties. Upon his arrival at St. Stan’s, Archbishop Burke gave pronouncement to the automatic excommunication.

When he left his post at St. Agnes Cathedral in Springfield, Father Bozek left a diocese very much in need of priests. The Post-Dispatch reported a claim by Father Bozek that Bishop Leibrecht had encouraged Archbishop Burke to take him, but that the archbishop refused. That claim was later denied by both bishops.

Father Bozek even claimed that Bishop Leibrecht understood why he was doing what he was doing. However, Bishop Leibrecht’s statement on the matter does not betray any kind of understanding whatsoever: “Father Marek Bozek has gone from ordination to excommunication in three short years. This descent has taken place because he has not remained a man of his word. On ordination day, he promised publicly before all assembled that he would give his life to the people of southern Missouri in full cooperation with his bishop. That has not happened. Instead, division and schism in the Church has [sic] taken place.”

The board has appealed the excommunication. The appeal first goes to the archbishop. If he denies it, it then goes to the Vatican. There it will most likely go to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith given that the cause of the excommunications was schism. How the American Archbishop William Levada will respond to it will be interesting to watch.

Szyszkiewicz writes from Minnesota.

Where we Catholics are failing -- miserably

What the Charlotte Observer points out in the story linked above is that the Catholic Church in the U.S. is not doing a very good job at keeping Latino Catholics Catholic. It's interesting that the California Catholic Conference is boasting that in the next few years, California will have a Catholic population that makes up 37 percent of the population. I add to that claim a definite "maybe." That's if they can hold on to the Latinos who are going there.

However, we're not alone in this difficulty. According to a TIME magazine article back in 1999, between 1960 and 1985, the number of Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants doubled in Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Haiti and the Bahamas; tripled in Argentina, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic; quadrupled in Brazil and Puerto Rico; quintupled in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Peru; and went up by a factor of six in Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia. Brazil is the largest Roman Catholic country in the world with more than 100 million Catholics, but only 10 percent of them show up in church on Sunday.

The difficulty is that most Latinos are cultural Catholics. They grew up poor and illiterate, went to church because that was what their parents had done and taught them to do, and so on. It's simply a part of their life and a basically unquestioned one. Now there are leaders who are versed in the Catholic faith, or at least in a version of the Catholic faith, but not one that corresponds to reality. (That would be liberation theology, of which I have written here and here.) Other than these folks, though, most poor Latinos know nothing about the "why" of the Catholic faith.

So when they come here to the States, they're confronted with a whole bunch of other religions and proselityzers who confound them with all kinds of "truth" about whatever -- the supposed idolatry of "worshipping" Mary and the saints, all the conspiracy theories involving the Vatican, the "errors" of the Eucharist, and so on. Because of their ignorance of their Catholic faith, they're easily hoodwinked into thinking that what the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostals or Evangelicals say is completely true, and they are lured away from the fullness of truth.

So we have a two-pronged problem here, and it brings to mind the fact that we U.S. Catholics cannot ignore what is going on in other parts of the world, because those problems can easily come to roost in our backyards.

What our bishops are going to do about it, I don't know. They should lead the charge, but I also want to live beyond the next few minutes, so I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them. It will be up to us laity (who have the responsibility to be the salt of the earth and the light to the world, as the Second Vatican Council taught) working with and through our various apostolates and maybe even establishing new ones specifically for this purpose of educating Latinos in the truth of the faith. Then they will at least have something to stand on when they're confronted with the various religious salesmen who come peddling their hole-ridden wares.

Why Catholic nuns are disappearing

One Ken Briggs just wrote a book called Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns.

Yes, you read that correctly -- "betrayal." You see, according to Mr. Briggs, the Council told them to do everything they did afterwards. "Most communities of nuns doffed the habit for civilian clothes, decided to permit sisters to live outside the convent, and gave sisters a choice whether to continue working within church institutions or, in keeping with a newfound mission to the broader world, to function as professionals in secular settings," he wrote in the above-linked column.

So when the Catholic Church didn't follow their lead, they were "betrayed." I wrote the following letter to the editor, which I believe sums things up nicely:

I just came across Ken Briggs' commentary announcing his new book on why Catholic nuns are disappearing. There's one thing that Mr. Briggs appears not to get. By "following their own lights," they aren't following the Light of the World, the only light the Church is called to follow. So when you have nuns describing themselves as crones (witches), giving Da Vinci Code tours and leading tours of Central America in order to help women find the goddess within (and that's all within but one community), somehow or other I just don't think too many women are going to be attracted to that as a legitimate expression of Catholic life.

The papal prayer intentions

Perhaps the most neglected aspect of the Petrine ministry is the monthly prayer requests that the Holy Father has. In April, Pope Benedict requested prayers for the Church in China, a request that I don't think went over too well in Beijing. Notice that he put out the request and relations turned sour pretty quickly. Now that could have been a result of demonic influence in response to the prayer (nothing too unusual there), but it could also have been the result of Chinese officials feeling like Benedict had one-upped them. (The prayers seem to have been effective, though, if recent reports that a couple of Vatican representatives are in China are true.)

In May, he prayed that laws in the mission countries would protect human life from conception to its natural end.

Last month (the quote below is from Vatican Information Service) was another doozie:

The Holy Father's general prayer intention for June is: "That Christian families may lovingly welcome every child who comes into existence and surround the sick and the aged, who need care and assistance, with affection."

His mission intention is: "That pastors and the Christian faithful may consider inter-religious dialogue and the work of acculturation of the Gospel as a daily service to promote the cause of the evangelization of peoples."

It's the second one that's important to note. Acculturation and inter-religious dialogue are not ends unto themselves. Rather, they have to serve the cause of evangelization, the cause of bringing Jesus Christ to the world. This is a slap to those who think that inter-religious dialogue is simply a matter of getting to know one another for the sake of getting to know one another.

In other words, Dominus Iesus was not a fluke, a kind of abberation on Pope Ratzinger's stellar flight to the papacy, one that he now repudiates as having been stupid and going overboard as some have said. No, it was a document on the truth of the God-Man who changed the course of human history and who still does that today. If acculturation and inter-religious dialogue do not serve the purpose of bringing the truth of the Gospel to those with whom we dialogue, then there is no reason to engage in it.