Waiting for Godot to Leave

A scene from the Riot in the Cathedral, where protesters attempted to stop the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno. Conservatives are rightly angry at liberal bias in the media.  There's a lot of it. But the game works both ways.  There's a huge conservative bias as well, and it follows a pattern. The pattern is typically this.  Someone in the Church does something horrifically awful and outrageously embarrassing, something that can't possibly be defending or excused.  For several days the truth is out there and none of my DC (Defensive Catholic) friends comment on it either here or on Facebook or elsewhere.  An awkward silence falls and the truth is simply ignored. Then (typically) the Catholic Defense League or an organization like Catholic News Agency pipes up with a defense of the situation that is a real stretch of the imagination, but that provides a handy template for the reactionaries to use, and suddenly comboxes are filled ev...

Protesters attempting to stop Juan Barros from being officially installed as their bishop. Click here to see a BBC video of the near riot that erupted at the cathedral at Osorno, Chile where protesters tried to stop the ordination of their new bishop, Juan Barros. Barros is implicated in a cover up of sexual abuse. The background is this.  In a situation that's very similar to that of Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ, a Chilean priest, Fernando Karadima, played up to the wealthy conservative elements in Chilean Catholic society and established a kind of parallel Church, cultivating a group of followers, some of whom became priests - and one of whom is now the bishop of Osorno.  And all the while this Fr. Karadima was sexually abusing boys and young men. He had trained five bishops and dozens of priests, acting as a spiritual leader and father figure for young men who later accused him of molesting them. ( The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2011 ) Complaints and red ...

MO--First Catholic official calls for Bishop Finn’s removal For immediate release: Thursday, March 19 Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790,  SNAPclohessy@aol.com A member of Pope Francis’ new child sex abuse panel is calling for the removal of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn. It’s the first time a Catholic official is publicly and explicitly pushing for Finn’s ouster. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/pope-francis-sexual-abuse-allegations-chile-bishop-barros     Peter Saunders of London was tapped by Pope Francis to be on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors . He founded and heads a charity for abuse victims called NAPAC (The National Association for People Abused in Childhood). “If we don’t see real change, if we don’t see the likes of Bishop Finn removed immediately . . .then the committee will be a pointless exercise,” Saunders told The Guar...

Here's a repeat of a post from December of 2013 ... *** C. G. Jung One of the games Carl Jung and his followers used to play was this.  They would claim that they were not obsessed with sex the way the Freudians were, that they (the Jungians) wouldn't say that Paschal Candle = Penis  (Freud would say this, and Christopher West does say this ) but instead they would claim Paschal Candle = Penis = Creative Power of God = the Self = Individuation ("Individuation", by the way, is a three-dollar word for, "Do whatever you want to do"). "The Paschal Candle does not simply symbolize the penis!" they would exclaim (though they'd say phallus instead).  "Because the phallus itself symbolizes creative energy, which symbolizes God, and God is the archetype for the Self - that thing beneath the ego that we must cultivate through the process of Individuation." But here's the problem - where do you choose the symbol to st...