Greeting: "Hello Chicago. The Church needs to change her teaching on sexuality."
Response: "Really? I thought it doesn't matter what the Church teaches for you people."
Yet they travel the land and the sea in an effort to convince people the Catholic Church needs to change moral and natural law. They peace and justice talk their point home... Little by little they pull apart even the faithful.
CHICAGO -- The roots of the decades-long clergy sex abuse scandal lie not in any set of rules or practices, but are found deep in the culture of the church itself, retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson said Wednesday in a wide-ranging talk at the historic Newberry Library in downtown Chicago.
The "major fault" of the church in the scandal, Robinson said, is that it "refuses to look at any teaching, law, practice or even attitude of the church itself as in any way contributing" to the crisis.
"In studying abuse, we must be free to follow the argument wherever it leads rather than impose in advance the limitation that our study must not demand change in any teaching or law," he continued. "We must admit that there might be elements of the 'Catholic culture' that have contributed either to the abuse or to the poor response to abuse.'"
Peppering his talk with personal stories of bishops and priests, Robinson spoke of 12 areas of Catholic culture he said deserved "serious consideration" for their role in contributing to the abuse crisis, including our understanding of God as a being who is frequently angry and a hierarchy that is prone to a "culture of obsessive secrecy." - NCR
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are." - Matthew 23
Fortunately, Archbishop Vigneron warned his priests away from the gathering:
"[...] a letter Monday from Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron to the priests of the Detroit archdiocese asked they not attend Robinson's talk Tuesday."I would discourage your attendance at this presentation and ask that you share my concerns with anyone you know who is planning or considering to attend," writes Vigneron in the letter, which was obtained by NCR." - ibidYet many priests were in attendence.
Fr. Martin will be getting his wish.
I found this comment posted at New Ways Ministry in the article about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend:
ReplyDeleteThe second Symposium speaker in the news again was Bishop Geoffrey Robinson. When he left the Symposium, he embarked on a U.S. speaking tour to Philadelphia, New York, New Haven and Fairfield, CT, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Santa Clara, CA, WHICH NEW WAYS MINISTRY ORGANIZED.
Organized, SO organized. I think that Bishops should take a page from their play book. Or, maybe we, the laity, should...