Forfatternavn:Oddvar

Jeg skrev for akkurat en måned siden om at Vatikanet ikke har tillatt lederen av Caritas International å kunne gjenvelges for en ny periode. Jeg har også lest at Vatikanet burde ha håndtert dette bedre; konsultert med Caritas bedre om dette problemet i forkant etc. – og det kan det sikkert være noe i. I dag leser jeg at George Weigel om spørsmålet i First Thing, og fokuserer på de ideologiske problemene i denne saken. Konfliken har oppstått, skriver han, fordi:

…. it will be because the INGO (International non-governmental organizations) world is dominated by an unbending “progressive” orthodoxy on development and health care questions that sits poorly with Catholic understandings of how people are empowered to break out of the cycle of poverty. INGO shibboleths are also in sharp conflict with Catholic understandings of the best way to fight the AIDS plague in Africa and other poverty-stricken parts of the world. There is very little public evidence that Caritas International, under Ms. Knight’s leadership, challenged the rigidities in INGO thinking that are a real-world obstacle to empowering the poor and to driving down the incidence of HIV/AIDS. A case in point was her address to a “Catholic Networking Session” at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

There, Ms. Knight asked. “Is there a uniquely Catholic approach to the global HIV pandemic? And if so, what is it?” Her first answer: “I fear that there may be people here in Vienna this week who would answer that it is one characterized by dogma, hypocrisy, moralizing, and condemnation.” …. did Ms. Knight challenge this caricature? Not really. The best she could manage was to lament that Catholic AIDS workers (the largest group of non-governmental care-providers for people suffering from AIDS) “are still dogged by these criticisms.”

Nor, in answering her own question, did Leslie-Anne Knight say what she might have said, which is this: “Yes, there is a uniquely Catholic approach to the global HIV pandemic. It is an approach that takes seriously the dignity of the human person, which includes the capacity of men and women to change patterns of behavior that put themselves, …. And it is an approach that refuses to burn incense at the altar of the false god latex, where the real votaries of rigid dogma are to be found among those for whom condoms are instruments of salvation.”

Ms. Knight, I hardly need add, said none of this. To the contrary: she put the authority of her position behind a reiteration of the poverty/stigma/low-educational-levels mythology. Which is to say, she reinforced the rigidities that are the true obstacles to the “development innovation and collaboration” for which she called.

I don’t mean to suggest that Ms. Knight is singularly wrong-headed. What she said (and didn’t say) in Vienna expressed what is quite likely the consensus among many Caritas International-affiliated agencies. These agencies have absorbed from the INGO atmosphere in which they work, and from the governments and international agencies on whose funding they have come to depend, the approach to development and AIDS that shaped Ms. Knight’s speech and rendered it strangely anemic in its Catholic identity.

That identity is what the Holy See is determined to reassert in global Catholic development and health care efforts. As the drama of that re-set unfolds, support for the Vatican’s efforts by the leadership of the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services would be in order.

Prester fra flere bispedømmer i England stiftet 19. oktober et «Confraternity of Catholic Clergy» – inspirert av pave benedikts besøk i England i fjor. Målet for foreningen er «the sanctification and support of Priests, and in promotion of Priestly life, holiness and mission.»

Fr. Tim Finigan skrev nylig om et nytt møte i foreningen, der bl.a. P. Aiden Nichols holdt et foredrag der han bl.a. snakket om følgende:

… A major theme Fr Nichols urged upon us was the importance of evangelisation for the life of the Church. He suggested that the decline of Catholic life in England according to every measurable criterion, was directly attributable to loss of the imperative for the conversion of England. He compared the failure to be missionary to that obex or obstacle which may be placed by the recipient of a sacrament, preventing its fruitfulness. Just as the removal of the obstacle will enable the reviviscence of grace, so the removal of the obstacle of the lack of missionary activity will enable the revival of the Church – for those within the Church as well as by the reception of those to whom this missionary activity is directed. In other words, people who evangelise will find that their own faith is strengthened by the very fact of doing so.

The theme of the Liturgy was not neglected. Fr Nichols cited the example of St Augustine who was moved by the sacred chant of the Cathedral at Milan. People need the sacrality of the Liturgy to move them to an active faith which recognises the necessity of evangelisation. There was much else of value that I would like to re-read when the address is published. I have not by any means done the paper justice in this brief write-up of some of my notes. …

Jeg har lest om (og skrevet om, bl.a. HER) Father Leonard Klein – luthersk prest fram til 2003, katolsk prest fra 2006 – men ikke fått med meg at han i fjor vår skrev en interessant artikkel om gifte katolske prester, som han kalte «What Can the Catholic Church Learn From Married Priests?» Her skriver han bl.a.:

… Whatever the difference is between celibate clergy and us exceptions, it is, I am convinced, not availability.

There is enough time; there is never enough time. What is true for everyone in the modern world is true also for priests, equally for the celibate as the married. Clergy who bemoan the demands of their office and the lack of personal time are whining. Tough though some of their situations may be, family life would not ease them.

I entered the Catholic Church in 2003 after twenty years as a Lutheran pastor and was ordained to the priesthood in 2006. I have a wife, three children, and five grandchildren. They have claims on my time, as do our large extended families. But many a celibate priest must respond to a large extended family or provide care for aging parents. Priesthood does not bring freedom from family and human obligations, nor should it. The requirements of a nuclear family are more immediate and time-consuming, but it does not seem to me that they establish a categorical difference in availability from the rest of the clergy.

To be sure, married priests can’t easily be sent off for advanced study in Rome. Nor can we move at the drop of a hat. We are in some ways more expensive, but the costs of maintaining and staffing a rectory are considerable. And we are generally cheaper to educate, since we all come to the Church with theological educations and a personal formation refined by the reflection and self-examination that led us to full communion.

So it cannot be the practical arguments that bear the weight for celibacy. ….

Les hele artikkelen her.

«Skal det bare én telefosamtale til før en prest blir suspendert?» Slik avslutter John Allen en artikkel som omtaler behandlingen av anklager mot katolske prester i erkebispedømmet Philadelphia. Der har kardinal Justin Rigali tydeligvis (uten at mange visste det) ikke rapportert videre anklager mot prester som man ikke har funnet troverdige eller alvorlige nok. Men nå har nylig en domstol funnet at 37 av disse prestene har alvorlige anklager mot seg, og diskusjonen blant amerikanske biskoper raser – og de fleste er svært mye strengere i sin praksis. Les Hele John Allens artikkel her, og han avslutter den slik:

…. bishop complained of a “lack of information” from the Philadelphia archdiocese. “We have this massive grand jury report,” he said, “but the responses from the archdiocese so far have been vague.”

Others came to Rigali’s defense, suggesting there may be a “benign” interpretation of choices made by the cardinal and his aides.

Some of the cases in the grand jury report, one bishop said, may involve “boundary issues,” such as an inappropriate conversation with a minor, that do not necessarily rise to the level of sexual abuse. In those instances, the bishop said, a decision not to make a report may have been intended to resist “charter creep,” meaning expanding the purview of review boards beyond their mandate, distracting them from their core purpose.

Another bishop said the Philadelphia situation highlights a key bit of unfinished business: achieving a clearer definition of what precisely constitutes sexual abuse, and how it differs from other objectionable conduct.

“My sense is that some review boards handle these ‘boundary issue’ cases one way, and some boards handle them another way,” one bishop said.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take them seriously,” this bishop said. “We have to move quickly to address them, but they require a different response than actual sexual abuse.”

In general, most bishops seem hesitant to pass judgment until more facts are in. “At this point, I don’t sense resentment directed at Rigali that in any way approximates what the bishops felt about Bernie Law,” one prelate said, referring to the former archbishop of Boston who resigned in December 2002 amid the first wave of the American crisis.

A final worry expressed by some bishops concerns the impact of the Philadelphia situation upon priests across the country.

The takeaway from Philadelphia, one bishop said, is that no matter how weakly documented a charge may be, it will now automatically result in a report to the police and the review board, and suspension from ministry — meaning that in the court of public opinion, the priest will be branded an abuser.

“Every priest in the country is just one phone call away from disgrace and removal,” the bishop said. “I don’t understand why nobody seems to be speaking up on this.”