Catholic Conservative Hate Mail

I have got a lot to do today so I'm just going to crib this from a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter  about the US Catholic Conference of Bishops meeting to address clerical sexual abuse (I'll bet you, as I didn't, even know it was going on).  It shows how clueless the USCCB, most of whom are still those mediocrities appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are about the inappropriateness of their privilege when they should be doing severe penance on the issue.

On the eve of this week's meeting, as news broke that a bishop in West Virginia had sent large cash gifts to more than 100 other clergymen, writing personal checks that were then reimbursed through sleight-of-hand accounting, all of it funded by multimillion-dollar annual revenues from a century-old gift to his diocese of a Texas oil field.

Not only that, but the news report showed that Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, tasked by the Vatican with investigating the bishop, Michael Bransfield, had edited out his own name and the names of the other senior bishops and cardinals who has been recipients of Bransfield’s largesse. When this concealment came to light, Lori quickly apologized, admitted his mistake and said he would return the $7,500 he had received from Bransfield. Other top churchmen followed suit.

The problem is that if Bransfield is a particularly egregious example of the culture of rewarding friends and cultivating allies with gifts and cash — and living far better than most of one’s flock — he is not a total outlier.

Particularly in the large, historic and relatively wealthy dioceses of the East Coast, such Old World customs are fairly common, and while not necessarily corrupt, they show how fungible and opaque church finances remain. They also demonstrate a pastoral disconnect that leaves so many stunned — as well as creating the kind of environment of entitlement that leads to other abuses.

Consider that this week's meeting in Baltimore was originally scheduled to take place at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Santa Barbara, Calif., a $600-a-night resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean, owned until recently by Catholic multimillionaire Tim Busch.

It revealed much about how the bishops view themselves to see them book a place more suited to a corporate CEOs' getaway than a “retreat” for pastors living humbly in service to their flock. Only when the 22 bishops of California threatened not to come to the Ritz-Carlton did USCCB leadership change the venue, saving the church from responding to the Bransfield story even as the prelates lounged around a pricey Pacific Coast spa.

Changing this culture has been a priority for Pope Francis. He has compared changing the church’s entrenched culture to “cleaning the Sphinx with a toothbrush.” The pope himself has chosen to live in the Vatican guest residence rather than the grand apostolic palace, and to eat at the Vatican cafeteria with other workers. He views such daily humility as inextricably linked to the kind of pastoral and inclusive “church for the poor” that he envisions.

Francis has said that Catholics will forgive their pastors most weaknesses except for two: “an attachment to money … and the mistreatment of people, which is something the people of God cannot digest.”

There are signs that Francis’ clerical power wash is having some effect. He has begun appointing bishops from outside the usual clerical career track, promoting priests who have worked as pastors and in charity organizations, rather than the traditional network of canon lawyers and chancery officials. 

Before Francis named him to head the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in Florida in 2017, for example, Bishop Bill Wack, a 51-year-old Holy Cross priest, worked mainly as a parish pastor and for six years running a house for the homeless and poor in Phoenix.

You can contrast that to the far right pillars of clericalism that were the choices of the last two popes.  

The oligarchic corruption of Catholicism, the actual attempt for them to control the Vatican and dioceses and archdioceses is as real as the historical corruptions of the late renaissance and the medieval eras.  Considering that the fortunes of those involved, their ability to reach across the world to exercise their corruption, I think it's far worse than what set off the Reformation.  As I said yesterday,  much as I like Francis, I think his concentration on protecting the Catholic Church against a right-wing schism is going to create a far more serious schism with those who want the justice and other blessings promised in the documents of Vatican II.   Benedict, the retired and most incompetently radical anti-pastoralist pope of the modern era remains the central focus of the fascistic reactionaries you can find represented on the front page of any google search, Youtube searches if you put anything dealing with Catholicism in a search engine, the media empire of the late "Mother Angelica" or, as I called her, "that Nazi nun".  That effort isn't representative of more than a small faction of Catholics, that effort has big, big money behind it and fascism of the type that Raymond Burke's until recently buddy, Steve Bannon perfectly embodies.  If you want to look for parallels in the book of Revelation (that's "Apocalypse" to us Catholics) you'll find them.

*  You might want to read this article about Tim Busch, one of those far right Catholic funders of reactionary, clericalist corruption I referred to.  I will point out this passage that exposes the grotesque hypocrisy of the Catholic anti-choice establishment. 

Last week, the university announced a $3 million gift to its School of Business that Mr. Busch helped put together. The gift garnered some media attention because fully half of it came from the Charles Koch Foundation. The Kochs gave a $1 million gift to the school last year, and many on the left criticized the university for taking money from such a disreputable source. I was not one of those critics. As I said at the time, and repeat now, with a tip of the biretta to Jerry Falwell when it was disclosed he had taken money from the Moonies, "The Devil has had that money long enough."

I will note, in passing, the irony that groups like the American Life League and the Lepanto Institute get people all riled up when the bishops' anti-poverty program, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, makes a grant to organizations that are affiliated with groups that promote issues like same-sex marriage or abortion rights, but they have been strangely silent on CUA taking money from Mr. Koch, who announced to the world, or at least to Barbara Walters (the effect is the same), that he is both pro-same-sex marriage and pro-choice on abortion. But irony is rarely a thing to be bothered about.

No, what bothered me was a quote from Mr. Busch in the press release announcing the gift. He said, "I am proud to donate to CUA's vision for an educational program that shows how capitalism and Catholicism can work hand in hand." . . .