Happy New Year

Nestled in the rectory of St. Ann's on this New Year's Eve.

Giving thanks for an amazing year of ministry this year. I met some wonderful people this year as result of ministry within my parishes and diocese. I saw the visible face of Jesus Christ in your lives. This is a privilege I do not take for granted.

As I close my eyes tonight (before midnight I might add) I offer all my hopes for you in this coming year. Thank you for allowing me to share the message of the Gospel with you. I treasure those experiences: both the joyful ones and the sorrowful ones which we shared together. They all have God's hand upon them and give us grace.

It was a hard year on priests: we have lost some good ones and ordained some new ones. In all, I suppose, I still am grateful God has blessed me with the beautiful gift of ordination in the Priesthood.

I pray especially tonight for the priests in the United States who have lived through some difficult times           as pastors. Some are hungering for a more responsible leadership from their bishops; some pray for a more pastoral response from their bishops, who hold authority before people. Most pray for a healing of relationships between the institutional Church and her people. They are remembered tonight.

New Year's Day is the World Day of Prayer for Peace - and we have desperate need of it. Let us make that our shared prayer for communion tonight.

God Bless,one and all. Happy New Year!

Good Night

Convicted US Bishop " Elephant in the Room" at US Bishops Annual Meeting

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gathers for its annual fall meeting Nov. 12-15 in Baltimore, one of the biggest issues confronting the prelates won't be on the formal agenda: how to cope with the re-election of a president whose policies many bishops denounced as unprecedented attacks on the Catholic church.

But another topic not on the agenda may loom just as large for a hierarchy hoping to wield influence in the public square. In September, Bishop Robert Finn of Missouri became the first bishop to be found guilty of covering up for a priest suspected of child abuse.

Unlike President Barack Obama's election, however, Finn's status isn't a subject the churchmen are eager to discuss.

The verdict against Finn, leader of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and an outspoken conservative, initially prompted widespread calls for his resignation, a Vatican suspension or discipline from his fellow bishops.

Yet in the two months since Finn's conviction, no bishop or church authority has addressed his case, nor has anyone spoken to Finn privately, according to Jack Smith, Finn's spokesman.

"Bishop Finn will be attending the USCCB meeting, as he has been fulfilling all of his responsibilities as Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph," Smith wrote in an email. "Bishop Finn and the Diocese, through its Office of Child and Youth Protection, are actively engaged in fulfilling the terms of probation."

Smith added that Finn did not intend to address the bishops either in their public or closed-door sessions. USCCB officials also said there were no plans by conference leaders to raise the issue of Finn's status.

By remaining silent on the issue, critics say the bishops are not only undermining their own policies -- Finn heads a diocese yet would not be allowed to teach Sunday school in an American parish under the USCCB's rules -- but they are undermining their credibility and their claims to have learned from the devastating scandal.

"Nothing has changed over the past 10 years," said Anne Burke, an Illinois state Supreme Court justice and an original leader of the National Review Board, a blue-ribbon panel of lay Catholics that the USCCB set up in 2002 to hold the bishops accountable.

Burke said the yawning hole in those policies is the lack of any mechanism for disciplining bishops who violate the charter, as the collection of child safety measures is known. While the bishops pledged to "apply the requirements of the charter also to ourselves," they have shown no willingness to do so, she said.

"They've never done anything before so why should we expect them to do anything now?"

David Clohessy of SNAP, the leading victims advocacy group, agreed. "Our secular justice system has punished his wrongdoing, but the full Catholic hierarchy has ignored his wrongdoing," he said of Finn. Clohessy said SNAP -- the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests -- was writing to Finn asking him to stay away from the Baltimore meeting as a sign of contrition.

There may be one opening for movement on the issue next week: Al J. Notzon III, current head of the 16-member National Review Board, said the board will be meeting in Baltimore and will talk about the problems raised by the Finn case.

"We will be discussing the issue of accountability and one of the issues we will be pressing is the issue of timely reporting," Notzon said Thursday.

Notzon declined to say whether the board would address Finn's case directly, but said that after their meeting they would then meet with the bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, headed by Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet, Ill.

Last August, Conlon told a conference of church workers who oversee child safety programs in American dioceses that the hierarchy's credibility on fixing the abuse problem is "shredded."

At the bishops' spring meeting in Atlanta in June, Notzon also warned some 200 bishops that they must follow their own policies against abuse more rigorously. "No one can no longer claim they didn't know" about what is required to protect children, Notzon said then.

On Sept. 6, Finn was found guilty of a single misdemeanor count for not telling police that one of his priests, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, had taken hundreds of lewd images of children in Catholic schools and parishes.

Evidence introduced by prosecutors showed that Finn, 59, had received numerous complaints about Ratigan's behavior over the course of a year, starting in December 2010, and did not tell authorities even after Ratigan attempted suicide. Ratigan, 46, subsequently pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges.

Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was the first head of the USCCB's Office of Child and Youth Protection, agreed that the bishops have to discuss what happened and why in the "egregious" Ratigan case. And she said the best bishop to start that discussion would be Finn himself.

"The greatest gift he could give other bishops and the children is to come forward and talk about what happened," said McChesney, who now works as a consultant on child safety issues and often advises church groups and religious orders.

"What's at stake is continued disgruntlement, despair, and a lack of confidence and faith in the bishops," she said.

-David Gibson, Religious News Service

Story of a New Priest

The pathway to the ministerial priesthood of Jesus Christ is not spoken of often today. As a priest and pastor in 2012 it is an issue near and dear to my own heart. Our diocese has not ordained a priest in over 10 years. I am one of two incardinated priests of my archdiocese. We hover around a dozen priests for 49 parishes and two thirds of our clergy are currently priests from overseas.

I am the youngest diocesen priest of this diocese as my counterpart is over the age of 70 now. I wonder, daily, what the future of our diocese will bring.

I came across an article about the formation of priests today and in particular the priesthood of a young man from Boston who was recently ordained. It is a lengthy article but if you have time, if you love your church, if you love priests then take time to read it.

It made my day and reminded me yet again, how much I love the priesthood.

You may find the article here.

A Tribute to Priests: Bishop Strickland

The following is a tribute to all priests which I discovered from Bishop Strickland to the priests of his diocese. It really is for all priests and their parishioners:

A Catholic priest is a man of God but shares all the hopes, fears, dreams, concerns and daily challenges of every other man.

He often finds himself alone but at any moment he may be called into the most significant moments of another persons life. The door bell rings, a cell phone buzzes, there's a knock on the door or the office phone clangs and in a moment he goes from alone and quiet to "ministry mode" congratulating on a new birth, consoling in the midst of crisis, accepting an invitation to dinner, offering comfort at the news of a death, trying to calm a complaining parishioner or simply accepting the latest blurb that MUST be included in the next bulletin.

He often finds himself surrounded by a crowd of people but at any moment transported to a deep and quiet place where he encounters the Lord alone. Often this occurs at mass when the words from a hymn, a glimpse of a familiar face, as favorite phrase from scripture or an oft repeated line from the ritual of the mass cause him to pause and be reminded of the deep purpose of his life.

In between these moments the priest finds himself going about the business of life with all his brothers and sisters. The myriad of normal daily life images that every man encounters from the sublime thoughts of the mysteries of God encountered on a marble altar to the realization that he really does need to see what that "check engine" light on the dashboard of his car is all about.

When priests fail those they are called to serve, when they stumble in their own sinfulness or when their patience wears thin..........remember they are just men.
Men called by the Lord to do great things in the name of Jesus Christ God's own son.

Pray for your priest as they pray for you.

Bishop Joseph Strickland,
Tyler, Texas

Dedicated to the priests of his diocese.