Waiting on Church Audits...

Janet E. Pachmayer, the former bookkeeper at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Menomonee Falls, WI, was convicted of three misdemeanor theft charges last week and faces about two years in prison. She stated previously that she stole roughly $134,000 over the past few years by overstating the utility bills by a few hundred dollars and pocketing the difference. This raises some major questions of basic accounting procedure. When the pastor and a trustee at the parish signed checks, didn't they look at the amount on the check and the amount on the bill or did they not even have the bill with the check? This person was obviously given too much control of the parish finances. A basic audit would probably have uncovered the overstating of the utility bills because it is such a large portion of a parish's budget, and a basic audit would have also corrected the procedure for the signing and mailing of checks.

About one year ago, former Milwaukee Archbishop Dolan stated that church audits would be around the corner. So far... no news. The rumor is that this is because of the prohibitive cost. Nevertheless, something needs to be done to bring pastors and office persons and trustees up to snuff on basic auditing procedures. It would save us from many future headaches.

A Faithful Catholic

Caritas in Veritate - Love in Truth

I found the Pope's new encyclical on the "social doctrine" of the Catholic Church to be pretty good. He hits most of the big economic issues. There is an ever-present reminder that profit cannot be the primary or exclusive motive for businesses. Greater care needs to be taken that intellectual property and health care are not only for rich countries (e.g. withholding HIV-AIDS medicine from the African continent).

I do think he is wrong about concluding that the economic crisis could have been largely avoided if the birth rate had not dropped significantly in 1st world countries. Though the birth rate has decreased in the U.S., immigration (legal and illegal) has made up for it.

Benedict also stresses that reason needs faith and faith needs reason. This along, with the need for "wealth redistribution" is almost a mantra within this encyclical. He even refers to the need for redistribution on a global scale (42). Societies like the U.S. are also called to lower their energy consumption. We must be aware our climate and not squander our natural resources on projects such as war.

Those are the areas that particularly hit me as cutting edge.

A Faithful Catholic

Dan Maguire Statement about ROTC

Daniel Maguire, a Catholic moral theologian at Marquette University

recently released a statement concerning Marquette's Reserve
Officer Training Corp. Program (ROTC).  As the local Catholic
press will probably choose not to cover it.  I will repeat
his statement here:

Marquette University Peace Action: Marquette’s Lonely Prophets

Statement of Daniel Maguire, Professor of Moral Theology

Marquette University Peace Action (MUPA) has been a lonely
witness to the peace-making tradition that began in the
Hebrew scriptures and continued in the Christian scriptures
and early Christian communities. Their critique has centered
on Marquette’s being a center of ROTC training for 14 local
colleges. MUPA accepts the unfortunate fact that ROTC is
here. The military are firmly embedded at Marquette, and
money is a major factor in their being here. The university
and the ROTC students get financial support. MUPA recognizes
realistically that ROTC will not be easily dislodged because
of that. In my almost 40 years at Marquette, I have told ROTC
students: “Take the money from the military but don’t give
them your soul.” Of course, it is their souls and minds that
the military are targeting, and that is precisely the
educational issue that MUPA has been heroically engaging.

MUPA quotes The Army Field Manual:”Your personal values may
and probably do extend beyond the Army values, to include
such things as political, cultural, or religious beliefs.
However, if you’re to be an Army leader and a person of
integrity, these values must reinforces not contradict,
Army values.”

Give the Army credit for candor. That could not be clearer.
Religious values are trumped by Army values and valuations.
That is a bold challenge to this religiously grounded
university. Why has the university mounted no curricular
response? That is the question that MUPA has been
insistently pressing, like a voice crying in the wilderness.

Pope John Paul II spoke for fundamental religious values
when he said: “We can enrich our common heritage with a
very simple discovery that is within our reach, namely that
war is the most barbarous and least effective way of
resolving conflicts.”

Pope John XXIII said that “it no longer makes sense to
maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair
the violation of justice.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says: “In the wars of the 1990′s,
civilian deaths constituted between 75 and 90 percent of
all war deaths…Some two million children have died in
dozens of wars during the past decade….This is more than
three times the number of battlefield deaths of American
soldiers in all their wars since 1776.”

War is, by definition, state sponsored violence and it is
more brutal than it ever was in history. It is so horrible
that after Second World War the nations of the world
decided it could only be used as a police action,
collectively, in response to an attack, coordinated by the
United Nations.

Professor Richard Falk writes: “World War II ended with
the historic understanding that recourse to war between
states could no longer be treated as a matter of national
discretion, but must be regulated to the extent possible
through rules administered by international institutions.
The basic legal framework was embodied in the UN Charter,
a multilateral treaty largely crafted by American diplomats
and legal advisers. Its essential feature was to entrust
the Security Council with administering a prohibition of
recourse to international force (Article 2, Section 4)
by states except in circumstances of self-defense, which
itself was restricted to responses to a prior ‘armed
attack’ (Article 51), and only then until the Security
Council had the chance to review the claim”


THE SOLUTION AT MARQUETTE

ROTC is teaching our students a different gospel. ROTC
dissents from the popes by teaching that war is” a fit
instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.”
It teaches that war is not the “least effective way of
resolving conflicts.” In fact it is preparing our
students to participate in the three wars now ongoing—not
one of which was declared according to Article One Section
8 of our Constitution---wars against Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan, with threats of war in the air against Iran.
None of those wars meet the six criteria of “the Catholic
Just War Theory.” Not one of them meet those criteria.
None of the, in other words, satisfy Catholic teaching on
war-making. War that is not justified is collective murder
and our students are right now being trained to join in.

The challenge to Marquette is educational. The military
work on the assumption that war is a continuation of
national policy by different means. It works on the
assumption of the normalcy and inevitability of war. And
it is teaching our students that contrary to the teaching
of the two popes just mentioned, and contrary to the
biblical peace tradition, war is “a fit instrument with
which to repair the violation of justice.” It teaches
that “war is not the least effective way of resolving
conflicts.”

If ROTC were teaching the normalcy of abortion, Marquette
would respond with vigor. Why is war taken less seriously?
After all, war is abortifacient. Many of the hundreds of
thousands killed in the Iraq war were pregnant women and
we inflicted “shock and awe” on them and their fetuses.
Our students are being trained to do more of the same.

Solution: every ROTC student at Marquette should be
required to take two courses in the peace-making
traditions of the world religions, especially Judaism and
Christianity, with special training in the Catholic just
war theory. They should also be taught the obligations the
United States assumed by treaty to observe the United
Nations restraints on vigilante war, something we are not
now doing.

MUPA is no more radical than the popes. They are prophets
calling attention to Marquette’s failure to live up to its
avowed moral and religious commitments. They are not
calling for the ouster of ROTC. They are not trying to
take away ROTC money from Marquette or from Marquette
students. They are defending religious values and saying
those sacred values should not be trumped by military
values as the army insists. They are taking values they
were taught in their schools and churches and begging us
to live by them. To the shame of all of us, they have
been ignored for too long.

Bishops are to be loving shepherds...

The pope recently spoke these words to newly installed archbishops visiting Rome. Although these are good words in and of themselves, maybe the situation of Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho is in the background. Sobrinho was the archbishop of Recife and Olinda Brazil. He was sent there in 1979 to replace Dom Helder Camara and his witness of loving compassion as well as his support of liberation theology.

Sobrinho has been in the news because he publically reminded a 9 year old, who had been repeatedly rapedy by her step-father for years, that the abortion she had meant that she was excommunicated per canon law. There was an uproar in Brazil for Sobrinho's callous response to the situation and even Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the head of the Pontifical Acadamy for Life stated that the church's first reaction should have been to minister to the girl.

Pope Benedict offically accepted Sobrinho's resignation on July 1st. Sobrinho is now 76. His resignation could have been accepted a year ago, when he turned 75. Bishops who are in the pope's favor often do not have their resignation accepted for years after turning 75. I'm guessing that Sobrinho's conduct did not please the pope. It is also a reminder that perhaps Archbishop Burke, formerly of St. Louis was really demoted when he received his Vatican post. I view this all as good news: callous bishops that were popular with JPII are perhaps not popular with Benedict.

A Faithful Catholic

Married Priests too Liberal?

Rent a Priest (http://rentapriest.blogspot.com/) has had quite a few good articles recently on married clergy and priests with families in African countries. They are worth checking out. It seems that in many parts of Africa, priests knowingly have families and as long as they are not too open about it, it is accepted. The most recent posting cites a priest who left the Catholic Church to openly marry his girlfriend/nun, because he felt it was dishonest not to be open about it.

Weakland also addressed the issue of a married clergy regularly in his book. So why does the Roman Catholic rite persist in not having a married clergy (with very few exceptions)? Only two reasons come to my mind. Sex and liberalism. At least with former clergy that I have met that are married, most seem to have a more liberal bend. While allowing married priests would not guarantee a more liberal clergy, I think it is a fear. There is also a persistant fear of sexual issues from the Vatican and I do not think that bishops want priests having sex. How would it look if your parish priests was using condoms? The few priests that are allowed to be married are converts from other denominations. In most cases, they are coming to the Catholic Church because they want to be a part of a more conservative church. Hence, the current married clergy are often more conservative.

And although I know that a married clergy has not solved the clergy shortage in other denominations, as conservative Catholics like to remind us, Catholics are different. Maybe it would work for us. It couldn't hurt, could it?

A Faithful Catholic

A Brief Summary of "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop"...

The book begins with a prologue devoted to the public revelation of his relationship with Paul Marcoux in 2002. Chapter 1 he devotes to his family heritage and early childhood. Chapter 2 covers his years in Latrobe, Penn. at St. Vincent Abbey as he went through high school and began college. Chapter 3 covers his education in Rome, the taking of his final vows, and his ordination. Chapter 4 is devoted to his years at Julliard and Columbia University and his first parish assignments. Chapter 5: his years as a priest at St. Vincent. Chapter 6: He is elected abbot of St. Vincent after the current abbot is seen as too harsh and uncompromising. Chapters 7-10 cover his years as Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order in Rome beginning at the age of 40. Weakland was involved in liturgical reform and protecting his Order from some in the curia who want to create uniformity in a culturaly diverse Order with various forms of ministry. He also travelled A LOT. He tried to bring male and female Benedictine communities up-to-date. Especially with many female communities, he pushed for education in scripture and doctrine. Pope Paul would aid his effort in this when curia members tried to stop him. It was soon understood that Paul would always lend an ear to Weakland. Weakland points out that Paul always attempted to keep the peace between the traditionalists and progressives by appointing both groups within the curia and as bishops and cardinals.

Chapters 11-15: In 1977, Paul VI asks Weakland to go to Milwaukee. Weakland decides to follow the pope's wishes, partly because he is led to understand that being a bishop doesn't mean he needs to always keep his mouth shut. While rumors abound, it seems false to conclude that Paul was trying to get rid of Weakland. With the election of John Paul II in 1978, Weakland comes to understand keeping opinions to oneself is the preference of JPII. Weakland devotes time to the Economic pastoral, which he chaired and is obviously proud of (for good reason), and his numerous confrontations with curia officials. Their problem is not so much with his doctrine as it is with his attitude; they want his attitude to be one of total permissiveness to the papacy; there is no room for disagreement or dialogue. Weakland also spends a lot of time on the idea of collegiality among bishops from Vatican II that JPII has basically destroyed single-handedly (he carefully explains how JP II did this). JPII has basically made all bishops representives for the pope and prevented national bishops conferences from publishing pastoral letters without aggressive meddling from Rome.

He spends about 40 pages on the sexual-abuse scandal, but I wish he would have said more.

Weakland's Book is Fantastic... and sad.

Rembert Weakland's A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church is a fantastic book. It is a must read for anyone who wants an understanding of the renewal that was called for at Vatican II regarding collegiality, liturgy, ecumenism, renewal in religious orders, etc. He seems to be very honest and accurate in his assessment of pluses and minuses of both Paul VI and John Paul II, obviously favoring Paul VI.

The work that Weakland has contributed to economic, liturgical, laity, women, and collegiality issues cannot be over-emphasized. In these issues, Weakland has left a tremendously positive mark.

His sections regarding John Paul II and JP's agenda of centralizaiton in the Chruch is very discouraging, but it is an accurate portrayal of our current Church. I am not sure how to read his writings on sexual abuse cases in Milwaukee. I do not feel competent enough to judge how valid his responses are. And for those who want to know about his "affair," he also seems to be very honest there. I could hear him still struggling with how to appropriately handle the situation after the fact.

While I wish Weakland could have been a stronger man when it came to his loneliness, I think this book is important in writing an honest history of our post-Vatican II Church.

A Faithful Catholic