David Gibson: February 2009 Archives

For many years this site, "Sacred Space," a ministry of the Irish Jesuits, has been one of my preferred sites for contemplation and prayer. Well, really the only one. Its simplicity and Ignatian orientation draw me back time and again, though Lent is usually when I return most faithfully. The opening welcome is aimed at keyboard slaves like many of us:

We invite you to make a 'Sacred Space' in your day, and spend ten minutes, praying here and now, as you sit at your computer, with the help of on-screen guidance and scripture chosen specially every day.

If you don't know it already, or if you haven't been there in a while, check it out this Lenten season.

Job losses are mounting everywhere, and this sight--employees of The Rocky Mountain News reacting to word that today's edition would be the last for the 150-year-old paper--is all too common. But I hope I always find it deeply affecting. And less common.

The Holocaust-denying schismatic Traditionalist was just kicked out of Argentina, which seems unjust to me, despite Williamson's noxious views. Today, back in his native England, Wiliamson issued an apology, via ZENIT (an arm of the Legionaries, which has had its own travails), for his quite detailed argument that the Nazis did not gas Jews in death camps. But while Williamson has said he will do more study regarding his views of the Holocaust, he doesn't seem to repent of them here. He apologizes to those who were hurt by his remarks.

The text:

I'm not much for Mardi Gras--too old, too tired, too many hangovers. And that's just the French Quarter. I, however, can't take much forced revelry, either. But before Ash Wednesday strikes, let me point you to a Tim Dolan post I missed earlier, Cathy Grossman's USA Today roundup, which includes a couple good Dolan lines to be kept in mind for later years when he's ticking everyone off. Hey, it happens. It'll even happen to Obama. Maybe after tonight's State of the Union. In any case...

Church historian Matthew Bunson says the pudgy archbishop once told him he preferred to try and lose weight with a stationary bicycle rather than a treadmill because you can ride with a beer in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.

More to the point for New Yorkers wondering what to expect. In the January 2005 edition of The Priest magazine in a column addressing the whipsawing challenges faced by priests with disgruntled parishioners, Dolan wrote:

Not long ago, I got a letter from a group of people in a parish saying their pastor had to go because ''sometimes he curses.'' My reply? ''Big damn deal. He's staying.''

Oh, and Dolan apparently thought the call from Obama was his brother pranking him. I imagine the jokester he had in mind is the brother who is a former AM radio host.

Ah, farewell to flesh!

PS: Great NY Post cover shot via Rocco.

The pontiff is taking unnamed critics to task, as per this CNS story, "Pope cautions against destructive polemics in the church."

The pope, speaking in German at his noon blessing Feb. 22, asked for prayers to St. Peter so that "disturbances and storms do not shake the church" and that Catholics remain united in faith and love.

Two days earlier, addressing students at Rome's diocesan seminary, the pope recalled St. Paul's admonition to Galatian Christians not to "go on biting and devouring one another" but instead to be guided by the Spirit.

"St. Paul refers here to the polemics that emerge where faith degenerates into intellectualism and humility is replaced by the arrogance of being better than the other," the pope said.

"We see clearly that today, too, there are similar situations where, instead of joining in communion with Christ, in the body of Christ which is the church, each one wants to be superior to the other and with intellectual arrogance maintains that he is better," he said.

"And in this way arise polemics that are destructive, and there arises a caricature of the church, which should have a single soul and a single heart," he said.

One can understand Benedict's lament, given the past few weeks of missteps and misfeasance in Rome, highlighted by the SSPX debacle and the latest Maciel revelations and the furor over the Katrina-loving, would-be bishop from Austria.

But in light of the failings at the top in this regard--see, for example, this Times of London piece on Benedict's isolation and indifference to advice--it seems that the doctor might want to take some of his own medicine. And while he didn't name names in his critique of the critiquers--heck, there have been so many lately--he may want to tone down his own amen corner first. (e.g., Father Z's apoplectic attack on The Tablet of London and its Rome correspondent, Robert Mickens.) The vitriol of the right is poisonous.

Moreover, it is secrecy and a lack of accountability (born of humility) when things go south that breeds viral criticism--when people have no recourse to the powers-that-be, no influence or authority or say, they'll shout ever louder. And as we've seen, that can work to the good--Maciel, Williamson, the Linz bishop--but with much more turbulence than it has to.