Waiting for Godot to Leave

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative has written about the Scandal in St. Louis  and mentions me and some of the things I've posted recently here . Rod's concluding sentences speak directly to the spiritual turmoil I now find myself in ... It is very, very hard to walk the tightrope between cynicism and credulity; I struggle with this every day. The problem is when you don’t struggle at all. Hardcore cynicism is a different kind of Big Lie. Rod says this, speaking as a man whose faith took a direct hit from the horrors he discovered when investigating the Sex Scandal in the Catholic Church - which is something he did as a journalist, in depth and at length.  Learning the truth that he learned - a truth that most of us are unwilling to face - separated him from the true-believers who commit themselves to clericalism at all costs (a Big Lie), but also put him in the dangerous position of giving in to something that was cynical and bitter - "a different kind of Big...

Re. Fr. Jiang and Archbishop Carlson , I just wrote to a friend about the difficulty of blogging about this ... I keep trying to address the fact that we don't really know all the facts here - but even when we did (as in the Bishop Finn case ), the Super-Catholics still rallied around their guy and vilified the victims. So, yes, I'm skeptical and I'm cynical.  The story told by the alleged victim in Old Monroe fits a pattern; it rings true.  It may be false.  But apparently there's enough evidence to substantiate it, and if it is indeed true, it means we're dealing with a level of depravity in our archdiocese that no one is going to want to face head on.  It means that clergy and laity alike will lie thorough their teeth or at least bend the truth in order to keep up appearances and reputation.  It means that children and families will be sacrificed for the sake of status and power. If the allegations are false, then we're dealing with a similar level of ...

Most of this is just a teenage girl's fantasy. ... so said a commenter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website , dismissing in the most brutal manner possible a teen-aged girl in Old Monroe, Missouri who claims to have been molested by a St. Louis priest, whose crime her parents insist Archbishop Carlson enabled and tried to cover up. As I said before, this case has yet to go to trial (and I strongly suspect it never will, that it will now be plea bargained away).  And while we don't know many things, nor can we pre-judge the guilt or innocence of the accused cleric, we do know some things for certain. The priest was a favorite of Archbishop Carlson's, actually living with the archbishop in the archbishop's mansion, and having been brought by Carlson to St. Louis from Saginaw, Michigan, where Carlson was last assigned. The priest became a very close friend of the alleged victim's family, and would often spend the night at the family's house - even th...

CBS St. Louis reports that Archbishop Carlson has been accused of "tampering with evidence" in a civil suit related to a criminal case.  The criminal case involves Fr. Joseph Jiang, who has been charged with endangering the welfare of a minor  by means of fondling a teen-aged girl - after the girl's family had given him long and intimate access as a "friend of the family" who would sometimes sleep over. Here in St. Louis there are many supporters of Fr. Jiang, who is a young orthodox priest and who served at the Cathedral Basilica.  Note, for example, the vehemence of the comments at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website . The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis at Midnight Mass, Christmas 2012 Of course no one knows if Fr. Jiang is indeed guilty.  But orthodoxy does not equal innocence, as anyone familiar with Fr. Maciel or Bishop Finn knows. My only observation here is that what Archbishop Carlson is accused of   is almost exactly what Kansas City...

Kevin Tierney  has a short but clear-headed piece at Catholic Exchange entitled What the Theology of the Body is Really All About .  Hint: it's not all about sex. Indeed, one of Tierney's most compelling quotes is this ... When you limit TOB to primarily something about sex, you run into a glaring problem.  According to Blessed John Paul, the two individuals (outside of Christ) who lived the theology of the body  perfectly  were Mary and Joseph, and their union was emphatically  non-sexual .  (General Audience 3/24/82) This is really a pretty big glaring clue that the pop-Catholic excitement about TOB as sex-sex-sex-and-did-we-mention-sex? comes from our modern secular madness and not from what the Church actually teaches. Tierney admits that sex plays a role in what JP2 was saying in his Wednesday audiences, but that John Paul put sex in context, as the Church always does, and as we sinners never want to. And what is the context? Babies...

Sean P. Dailey writes ... Today, Sunday, July 7, 2013, Stanford Nutting made his first ever appearance in a homily at holy Mass.  It was in Springfield, Illinois. The parish will be unnamed to protect the innocent. The homilist is a permanent deacon, husband of Maggie Bishop. And he used Stanford Nutting and the Nice Creed as a negative example.  Huzzah for Stanford Nutting!