Waiting for Godot to Leave

Did you know that there's a way to become automatically virtuous, so much so that discernment and deliberation and uncertainty vanish and that every decision you make about a certain subject is automatically correct? No, it's not by means of mortification or by the long and frustrating process of trial and error and increasing maturity.  It's by charting your wife's fertile periods, taking her basal temperature, analyzing her vaginal secretions and examining her cervix.  And by giving money to the NFP industry. In addressing the question of "serious motives" or "grave reasons" that the Church teaches must be present for having sex only when you think your wife won't get pregnant, Fr. Richard Hogan of "NFP Outreach" makes a rather stunning assertion  (my emphasis) ... NFP ... builds a respect for human life. With this respect in place through the use of NFP, any decision by a couple to try to achieve a pregnancy or to avoid wi...

This was my first post on Bishop Finn.  It's from October 23, 2011.  Since this post, Fr. Ratigan was convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison.  Bishop Finn spent $1.4 million of diocesan money to defend himself, but was also convicted in criminal court of failure to report child abuse; he was placed on probation and fined.  He has been serving as bishop of Kansas City ever since his conviction, though such a conviction would have prevented him from even being a crossing guard at a public school.   He finally resigned today, under pressure from the Vatican. The Catholic Defense League and Opus Dei and some of Finn's fellow bishops shamed themselves by vigorously defending Bishop Finn, and in the case of the Catholic Defense League, spinning the story to a point where the facts of the case were utterly distorted. My original post garnered 99 comments, some of them very angry at me for daring to attack a doctrinally orthodox bishop.  It remains t...

This was a long time coming and is a welcome relief - The Pope has accepted the resignation of Bishop Finn of Kansas City. I've decided to turn comments off on this post.  I really don't want to read indignant Catholics who think this was the result of a liberal conspiracy against poor, persecuted, "conservative" Finn.   Read my two dozen or so posts about the situation , or go straight to the source and read the Graves Report , the independent investigation into how Finn covered up for and enabled the sexual abuse of children in his diocese.  Step away from the right / left factional split for a while and simply look at the facts.  Finn should have been removed long ago. I suspect Bishop Barros in Chile will be asked to resign as well if the situation there continues to fester. It is perhaps naive to hope that our bishops can be good, holy Christians.  It is, however, incumbent upon us to demand that they be decent, trustworthy human beings. Sadly, ...