Waiting for Godot to Leave

Bishop Livieres, looking like a kindly Lex Luthor. Below is the press release from SNAP on the Bishop Livieres issue.    It had appeared as if Livieres had been the first and only bishop removed from office since the Sex Scandal broke over ten years ago.  And even though his case was particularly egregious - making an accused child molester his vicar general, even after being warned by other bishops that the man was a danger to others, and then lashing out against the Vatican publicly - still this appeared to be good news.  It appeared as if Pope Francis was setting the bar very low, but at least he was setting the bar.  After all, if you won't sack a bishop for making an accused child molester and scam artist his vicar general and allowing him continued access to boys, then how serious are you about reforming the very worst element in the Church? And indeed for the first time since the crisis, the Vatican seemed to be getting serious about the problem,...

The Buenos Aires Herald reports ... Pope sacks Paraguayan bishop accused of protecting abuser priest Pope Francis has dismissed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who was accused of protecting a priest suspected of sexually abusing young people in the United States, the Vatican said today. The Argentinian-born pontiff has vowed zero tolerance against Roman Catholic clerics who sexually abuse minors after a series of scandals hit the Church in a number of countries around the world over many years. Last May, Francis called such abuse an "ugly crime" and likened it to "a Satanic mass". A statement said the pope had removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his post as head of the diocese of Ciudad del Este and named another bishop to run it as an administrator for the time being. The pope's sacking of the bishop came after a Vatican investigation of the bishop, the diocese and its seminaries, said the statement, which gave no details. Vatican sour...

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Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in my opinion the most beautiful of Marian feasts. In today's Mass, there is an optional sequence to be sung or prayed.  It is the Stabat Mater,   a 13th century hymn, whose stanzas are made up of rhyming couplets followed by a third line that rhymes with the next stanza's third line: AA B, CC B - like so ... At the Cross her station keeping , Stood the mournful Mother weeping , Close to her Son to the last . Through her heart, His sorrow sharing , All His bitter anguish bearing , Now at length the sword has passed. This is from the 19th century translation by Edward Caswall of the original Latin hymn. But in the official version of Caswall's translation, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops have placed on their website some very odd changes, such as this ... Let me mingle tears with you , Mourning him who mourned for me , All the days that I may live. What the hell???   The off...

Rabbi David Kaye, from To Catch a Predator There's an episode of To Catch a Predator, the reality show in which men try to have sex with underage boys and girls, and are then recorded in a confrontation with the show's host who reveals that they've been caught on video and that the whole set up is a law enforcement sting - there's an episode where a Jewish Rabbi " essentially tried to rape a 13-year-old boy " and is caught red handed. Though clearly guilty, the rabbi blames the show's host and pulls a " how dare you suggest such a terrible thing about me!  I'm a religious leader! " pose.  The rabbi's attitude is exactly the sort of thing you see from people who not only abuse positions of power, but who feel entitled to positions of power.  I've been dealing with it in the Catholic Church, sometimes on a personal level, for all of my 14 years as a Catholic. In fact, a prominent bishop whose history shows a repeated tendency ...

One of my Facebook friends can't quite understand why I think this paragraph from the Mission Statement (such as it is) of the so-called Culture Project is drenched with sex (called "chastity" on the Project's impossible to load website) ... "The experience was the same, though in different forms, textures, and places around the world. It was savoring a glass of red wine under the New York City skyline or trekking through the paths of the Pocono mountains; it was sitting in an old church or walking along the oceanside; it was reciting poetry or crafting a piece of music or falling in love; it was the personal experience of pressing against reality and finding deep questions and longings aroused. Among the raw questions and desires, one thing remained certain – they had fallen in love with something greater than themselves." Perhaps if I changed some of the phrasing into pick-up lines it might help. Hey, beautiful, I'd like to press against ...