Vacant See

This afternoon at 1 pm, Manitoba time, the See of St. Peter, was vacated by the now, Holy Father "Emeritus", Benedict XVI.

There will be much by way of ritual in the next days. Tomorrow, the College of Cardinals, will decide on the day to convene the Conclave to elect Benedict's successor.

There is much on my mind these days concerning the Church. I suspect that for the North American church there will be little to no change in our day to day lives as Catholics. I doubt that Cardinal Marc Ouellett, from Quebec will be elected for any number of reasons. I acknowledge that he does have a following of sorts but he lacks the charisma and leadership skills necessary to guide a church that is emerging throughout the world. A traditionalist to be sure, but unlikely to be able to effectively listen to the pulse of the world.

No, my friends, the time to listen, rather than speak, is here. I pray that the 115 men who will choose our next Pope will be attentive to the Holy Spirit.

For this I pray.

Cardinal Reflects on Future Pope

As fate would have it, 82-year-old Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was in Rome on Monday, the day Benedict XVI made his historic abdication announcement, having arrived from a wedding in Malta. He actually planned to attend that morning's consistory of cardinals, having no idea what was to come, but arrived late enough he didn't make it.

Obviously, he now wishes there had been an earlier flight.

Despite his age, McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, keeps up a hectic travel schedule and has a wide network of friends among senior churchmen on every continent, giving him a firsthand sense of the thinking in various corners of the world. Although he won't vote in this conclave, he took part in the election of Benedict XVI in 2005, giving him a unique perspective on the differences this time around. He'll also participate in the daily General Congregation meetings of cardinals before the conclave begins.

In terms of the politics of the American church, McCarrick is sometimes seen as a leader of the more liberal wing of the American bishops, though he generally likes to talk about the importance of the "center."

McCarrick sat down for an interview with NCR on Feb. 14 at the North American College, the residence for American seminarians on Rome, to discuss Benedict's resignation and the dynamics of the looming papal election. The following is a transcript, edited for style.

Now that we're three days after the shock, what's your reaction to Benedict's decision?

I have a great double feeling for the Holy Father. No. 1, though I don't know him as well as I did his predecessor, if you know him at all you can see his struggle of wanting to do the right thing. He loves the church and is very anxious to do what the Lord would want him to do. There's obviously a feeling of deep humility that he's no longer able to do this.

At the same time, there's also great courage. He must have thought that this is not going to be easy, but this is what God wants me to do. That's also part of the deep humility of the man, because he's thinking, "It doesn't matter what I think. It's what's best for the church." He's a servant of the church in every way. We all could do things differently, but he's a very good man. He decided in his heart that this is the right thing to do, I'm sure after much prayer -- more prayers than I could ever make. He's just an extraordinary man.

Yesterday, as I saw him at the beginning of the celebration, he looked very old. For the first time, for me, he seemed that way. I'm only three years younger than he is, and I've always admired him, wondering if I could do what he does. My heart broke for him, because as a pope you've got to be somebody special, and it's obviously incredibly hard to do at that age. We've already had the witness of strength in sickness of his predecessor, so he didn't have to reproduce that.

Some have suggested that having a former pope still alive may risk dividing the church. You have the experience of resigning as archbishop of Washington and giving way to someone else. Do you share that concern?

No, not at all. In my case, I did what one should do, which is I disappeared for a couple of years until everybody knew who their archbishop was. Now I can take a Mass from time to time, but I was out of sight for the first two years. I'm sure this man will do even more than that, because he'll get older and weaker.

What about the criticism that he shouldn't stay in the Vatican for fear of casting a shadow over the new pope?

At first I thought it's not good for him to be in Rome. Now I think it's for the best, because it prevents anyone who doesn't like the new man from saying, "I'll go up to Regensburg [Germany] and talk to [Benedict]." Now you can't do that. You can't get to him unless he wants to be gotten to. I suspect he'll do a lot of writing. He's such a brilliant theologian he could write for the next hundred years and never exhaust his interests.

Assuming that's right, do you think it would be better for his writing not to be published until after he's dead?

I don't see that. He'll write as a theologian. That's what he did with that fantastic trilogy about the life of Christ. He said, "I'm not writing this as pope, I'm writing this as a Catholic theologian." People have had some concerns about one or two positions he took, and with all deep respect, he said he's not writing as the Holy Father. As a theologian, he can put things any way he wants. He's not imposing it on the church. Anyway, this man is too humble to do that.

Let's talk about what comes next. You participated in the conclave of 2005. Aside from the obvious, what's different this time around?

The most important difference is that for the last seven and a half years, we've had a different pope. He has a different point of view in a number of areas, and a different style. He's got a certain reserve, a deep humility, and a great love for the church, but he's very different from his predecessor. John Paul had the same love for the church, but he really didn't have the same reserve, to put it mildly.

Benedict was someone who would basically follow the line of John Paul II, perhaps a bit more conservative on a number of things. He's probably a better theologian than John Paul II, though not a better philosopher. John Paul II was a philosopher and a poet; this man is a theologian and a teacher. You would often read the encyclicals of John Paul II and think, "I've got to read that again." The encyclicals of Benedict are very clear; they're really teaching documents. We've had that kind of a Holy Father for eight years. For almost 27 years before that, we had another kind of Holy Father. They taught the same things, they believed the same things, they loved in the same way, but they were different people. The ones who would have surrounded John Paul II might not have been the same ones who surrounded Benedict XVI because of his personality, his own vision.

That really is the big difference. Aside from that, we have some new cardinals, including some from the Third World, though some of us would have liked to see more. Still, it's the same church.

Is there any difference because it's not happening after the pope died?

I personally don't think that's going to be the major difference. It's the same sede vacante.

You remember the atmosphere of 2005 -- the 5 million people in Rome, the round-the-clock tributes in the global media, this tsunami of appreciation for John Paul II. The overwhelming impression was that this papacy was a massive success, which perhaps made it hard to take stock of the papacy's shortcomings. Is it easier this time to arrive at a more balanced assessment?

That definitely could be. In 2005, we were lost in the grief of the death of a great man. Now, we feel sad in the departure of a very good man, but it's not the same.

What effect will that have? I don't think it will be immediate, but it may have an effect on what the new pope can do. He's now freer than Ratzinger was. He's freer to do things that are new, he's freer to move -- more to the right, maybe, though I would say hopefully more to the center. Presumably it won't be to the left. He's freer to take a new direction, though of course not to change the theology of the church.

In terms of interior things, he could take a new approach to church discipline and the areas of his teaching. He may be more Gaudium et Spes, for instance, than Lumen Gentium. Benedict would have been more Lumen Gentium.

Externally, he needs to deal with the Islamic world. He needs to deal with Israel and what that means for the church. He needs to deal with the Third World. One of the things Benedict said in the early days [of his papacy] was that he chose the name Benedict because he was the patron of Europe, and he felt he needed to help rebuild the church in Europe. He's tried to do that, and probably the success or failure will be revealed years from now. You can't make snap judgments on these overwhelming historical movements. I think there are many in the Third World, however, who would like the new Holy Father to be very conscious of them. I think that's especially true, maybe, in Latin America.

Is the church ready for a pope from outside the West?

I think there's no question, yes. Where is the church today? The church is already outside the First World. That's where most of the church is today. The church is the same wherever it is, but it's also not the same wherever it is.

I've spent a lot of my life with Hispanics and in Latin America. As a young priest, I was in Latin America even before I began working in the United States. I really do love that part of the world, and I see it as a life spring for the church. I worry about it, because in many of the countries of Latin America, we're losing people. I think it would be so great for the focus to be on areas like Latin America. If we could have a Latin American [pope], that would be great too.

I asked if the church is ready for a non-Western pope. Is the College of Cardinals ready?

That's a different question. Not being a voting member this time, I can't answer that. I don't know. There will be conversations that will go on. I may be part of some of them, God only knows. I'll be going to the General Congregations, and it will be interesting to hear what they're saying. Were they ready for a Latin American last time? Well, apparently not.

You're talking about Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, (who was widely reported to have finished second to Benedict in 2005)?

I can't talk to that, as you know. But I can say that from the conversations beforehand, which we can speak about, it was certainly plausible that we could have a non-European. When you just look at the statistics, two-thirds of the church is outside the West. That's a movement we must become aware of, whether we pay attention to it at the highest level of electing a pope or whether the pope who's elected pays attention to it by making sure his cardinals and his congregations have many people from those areas. That may be another way to do it. However it's done, it has to happen.

In 2005, there was some criticism about Cardinal Bernard Law playing a public role in the transition because it resurrected memories of the sexual abuse crisis. This time, some have voiced similar complaints about Cardinal Roger Mahony. How do you respond?

In the case of Cardinal Mahony, he's been an extraordinary leader for the church in our country in so many ways -- for the rights of immigrants, for justice and peace, and on other fronts, whatever one might say about his failures. I'm sure he felt he was handling things in the right way at the time, but now in retrospect it seems inadequate. This is a very fine man, and I don't think we have to be embarrassed by any of our fellows.

As a matter of protocol, aren't cardinals expected to take part in these events unless serious health problems prevent them? In other words, Mahony isn't injecting himself artificially?

That's exactly right. He would have to eject himself!

Overall, how do you feel heading into this transition?

It's a fascinating time for the church. In it, there is a way to make this a special moment of grace for all of us. We can try to do that by how we preach and how we handle it. This is a teaching moment not just about the papacy, but about the faith, about the church, about the presence of Lord Jesus in the church, all these things. It's a special moment, and we've got to seize it. It's a moment to set the world on fire again.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday Reflection

Jesus said to his disciples:
“The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

Then he said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?” (Lk 9.22-25)

The Gospel this morning reminds us that this Lent, indeed the Christian Life as a whole, will demand a certain measure of sacrifice.

Last night, I encourage the faithful to not just make this Lent a season of sacrifice and self-denial, but to also make it a season of sacrifice for a purpose. This is to say that we can use our period of self-denial to lead us more gently into service of others.

Jesus makes this clear in the gospel today when he asks us to deny ourselves but also to "take up our cross" and follow.

There is a course; a direction; a purpose. Please take time to make this Lenten Season, a time of action; of service.

Lent is a kind of spiritual pruning time. In pruning a tree, the aim is not to inflict damage on the tree, but to help it to produce more and better fruit.

Lord, show us what we need to prune ourselves of this Lent, so that we may become more fruitful branches of you, the true Vine.

Ash Wednesday Homily

 Here is the homily from Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Ann's Parish, Flin Flon, MB.

Ash Wednesday

Welcome to Lent!

I've included the following by way of understanding:

Week of Surprise

I believe my Monday morning was similar to most people's this week. I awoke to hear that Pope Benedict XVI had resigned as Pope.

There has been much talk and speculation surrounding this move and I will not take this week as an opportunity to forcast or comment on what lays next. There are weeks ahead for that.

Instead, I would like to invite us to do what some have suggested: pray.

We pray for Pope Benedict; for his life and ministry. As turbulent as his papacy was it was nevertheless founded upon the Apostles and the work of the Holy Spirit. Clearly, his human weakness shone through these last years of Church history but, likewise, so did his deep love for Christ.

I consider the work of this pope similar to what I would of an aging parent. We are all limited in our perspective of what is needed and what is not. Our life experience shapes us and allows us to be the men and women we are today. I believe that many, myself included, who had hoped for change within the church, were patiently waiting for a new epiphany. As with all change in the church, it takes generations. I never have felt that this would have been a pontiff who would have embraced change.

There was much, by way of fidelity to Christ, that was illustrated through his life. The trilogy on the life of Jesus is spectacular and touching. The encyclicals which he wrote are inspiring. Pope Benedict will leave these as a legacy.

We pray for him these days and the time will come, shortly, when we will pray for his successor. Let us put aside names for now. Let us let the past be the past. Let us pray for him who exercised obedience to God which ultimately led him to this reality of retirement.

Tomorrow....is indeed, another day.

Homily 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Going Deep

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening
to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply,
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him. (Lk 5.1-11)

Here is the link for Sunday's Homily:

In Los Angeles a Victory for Truth: NCR Editorial

For those of you aware of the unfolding scandal, which has rocked yet another US Archdiocese, the National Catholic Reporter has written an editorial mapping some insight into the, apparently increasing lack of accountability of US bishops. It further develops to explain the absence of a response from the Institutional Church as a whole in these matters.

As a pastor I continue to fail to see how theological dialogue is considered a capital crime in our Church while those who offend, in the very gravest of matters against the vulnerable, are allowed to continue to enjoy the privileges of office.

The credibilty of our bishops is shattered. What are we as People of God to do in examining our complacency with allowing our Church to continue to do this?

The following is well worth your time to read:

To those familiar with the protocols of the Catholic hierarchy, the news was stunning. The archbishop of Los Angeles publically rebuked his predecessor, a cardinal, for his failures in dealing with the priest sex abuse scandal.

The action by Archbishop Jose Gomez, relieving Cardinal Roger Mahony of "any administrative or public duties," was remarkable on two levels.

First, it broke with the unspoken but nearly ironclad rule of the culture of Catholic hierarchy that bishops do not publicly criticize other bishops. That courtesy extended even to the most egregious examples of ecclesial malfeasance -- the deliberate and persistent hiding of criminal activities by priests. No one to this point had uttered a word against a predecessor, not in New York or Connecticut, not in Philadelphia or Milwaukee, not in Seattle or Santa Fe. There were "mistakes made," they would say, and offer vacuous apologies. For whatever reasons yet unknown, Gomez broke the code.

Second, the language Gomez used was blunt and unqualified. The behavior he found in the files, he said, was "evil." The acts themselves and the handling of these matters, as the files revealed, showed more than mistakes made, they showed a "terrible failure."

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed," wrote Gomez, who also referred to Mahony's sorrow "for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care."

Gomez's words are a direct contradiction of the weak defense that Mahony has advanced for years, all the while spending untold sums in attempts to keep the truth hidden. It is the same list of explanations that he repeated in a lengthy and testy response to Gomez's statement. "Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem," Mahony wrote. In studying for his master's degree in social work, he said, no lecture or textbook ever referred to the sexual abuse of children.

There is, of course, some truth to the "we didn't know" defense. Few knew, years ago, the seriousness of the disease borne by those who molest children. Much of it remains a mystery today.
But the "we didn't know" defense quickly wears thin against the details contained in the 12,000 pages of documents recently released by the court in Los Angeles, just as it wore thin against the truth revealed when documents were released in other places like Philadelphia and Boston.

That's why Mahony spent so much time and money over nearly a decade attempting to keep the documents sealed. It's why, even after agreeing to release documents as part of a 2007 settlement with 508 victims costing $660 million, he continued to fight tooth and nail to keep the documents secret. It is why he and the diocese's lawyers tried a last-ditch and ultimately failed attempt to get the courts to redact the names of church officials from the documents so it would be difficult to tell who did what. The documents put the lie to the "we didn't know" defense.

What they demonstrate -- and we have yet to read through all the thousands of pages -- is that diocesan officials, while they may not have understood the intricacies of the sex abuser's mind and motivation, did know laws were being broken, children were being raped and otherwise abused. They knew they had to take extraordinary lengths -- sending priests to counselors who were also lawyers so they could claim their conversations were privileged, sending some priests out of the country and others from parish to parish and diocese to diocese -- to avoid detection by the law and by the very Catholic community the officials were charged to serve. They knew enough to understand they had to hide the crimes and the behavior if they didn't want to besmirch the good name of the clergy culture.
Consideration of what was happening to the abused children and their families was incidental, at best.

What Mahony and others -- Cardinals Bernard Law, Justin Rigali, Edward Egan, Anthony Bevilacqua, and a host of archbishops and bishops -- really didn't understand was the degree to which their moral compasses had been distorted by the strong magnetic pull of the clergy culture. In their fierce allegiance to that exclusive club at all costs, in their willingness to preserve the façade of holiness and the faithful's high notion of ordination, they lost sight of simple human decency and the most fundamental demands of the Gospel.

It doesn't take a master's or a doctorate to understand that the first obligation of adults is to protect the children. When the first instinct became protection of the clergy and the institution, our leaders became disfigured at some deep and essential level. The Catholic community is still waiting for them to deal honestly with that reality, with what happens to them when their robes turn to purple.
Meanwhile, there are no heroes in any of this. Gomez may have broken with normal behaviors, but as many have already pointed out, he had access to the documents for two years and said nothing. And it is reasonable to expect that if Mahony and the lawyers had succeeded in keeping the documents sealed, nothing would have been said. The "evil" would have remained festering on some chancery shelf.

If Gomez really wants to do a service to the people of God in Los Angeles, he will reveal how much of the archdiocese's treasury was spent during the last decade on trying to hide that truth. By its own admission, the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese spent $1.39 million in a failed 18-month attempt to defend Bishop Robert Finn from charges of failing to report a child pornographer, and the Milwaukee archdiocese has spent $9 million in a two-year-long, far-from-settled bankruptcy case precipitated by sex abuse law suits. The amount of money the Los Angeles archdiocese has spent hiding these documents must be mind-boggling. That is evil, as well.

There are no heroes among the many other chancery officials and public relations advisers and lawyers who knew, some for many years, what crimes and sins had been committed against children.
There are no heroes in the Vatican structures, on up to the pope, among those who years ago could have demanded a review of the documents, come to the same conclusions as Gomez and removed Mahony long ago. It would have saved the church of Los Angeles years of suspense and enormous amounts of money. We say we believe the truth will set us free. In too many dioceses today, the truth remains hidden and the church remains in chains fashioned by its bishops.

Endless speculation will swirl now about why Gomez did what he did and what precisely it means. None of that really matters. What matters is the truth that will outlast reporters, commentators, perpetrators, cardinals, bishops, victims and the rest. The revelation and preservation of that truth in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles just received a boost with the release of the documents.

Homily for The 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Luke 4:21-30

Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying:
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say,
‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”
And he said, “Amen, I say to you,
no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built,
to hurl him down headlong.
But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.