NERVES IN PATTERNS

It’s common to hear Catholics describe prayer as a “conversation with Jesus.” We hardly bat an eyelash when someone says that "Jesus spoke to" him or her.

But what of the Buddhist who “has conversations with Buddha”?

Or the Scientologist who daily communes on a higher plane with the spirit of L. Ron Hubbard?

How about a Moslem whose prayer consists of “a conversation with Mohammad”?

Or a Mormon who claims to take instruction from the angel Moroni?

Are all these people telling the truth? Are some not?

How about the devout Protestant who hears Jesus tell him “resist the Pope!”

With advances in neuro-imaging we’ll soon be able to locate and quantify the brain activity of a lesbian praying to Gaia, versus, say, a Jesuit praying to Jesus.

----- o -----

RAW NUMBERS

I saw this blurb-size story in Catholic World News this morning, headed Women one-sixth of Vatican workforce.

Vatican, Jun. 25, 2007 (CWNews.com) - About one of every six workers at the Vatican is female.

Father Sandro Bianchini of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See announced that roughly 600 Vatican employees, 16% of the Vatican workforce, are women.

Seemed kind of deadpan. So I found some context.

According to the UN’s Statistical Yearbook of the Economic Commission for Europe 2003 publication, the Italian workforce (as of 2001) is 38.9% female.

Comparing 16 to 38.9 we see that the Vatican hires women at a rate less than half that of the average Italian employer.

----- o -----

JESUITS RAPED MENTALLY RETARDED

Gosh darn it! I was going to write some light stuff about John Donne and his attack on Ignatius. I was going to praise the Jesuits for giving us both Donne and Hopkins.

Also, I was going to articulate a basic FOME tenet: Everyone goes to heaven, there’s no such thing as hell, which we think of as "really" good news.

Then this.

Just when I think I can’t be shocked, a grotesque horror story comes to my attention. I got to it through Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit (I think).

According to the story, Jesuit priests and one brother serially molested two mentally retarded men who lived and did menial work at a Jesuit retreat center in Los Gatos. Price tag: $7.5 million.

Molesting mentally retarded people is a felony in California. The California Jesuit hierarchy covered up the ongoing felonious behavior, thus facilitating it.

Particularly obnoxious in the LA Times story is a Jesuit superior named Smolich. His puling denials and claims of ignorance and blindness are as unacceptable as those of any corporate crook. He’s in charge but he don’t know nothin’.

Here’s an article about SNAP protesting an honor being given to Smolich.

There are three groupings, at least, of Jesuits who are culpable in this and the other sex abuse cases.

1. The actual Jesuit personnel who did the raping and related crimes.

2. The Jesuit hierarchy who covered up and enabled (promoted) additional raping.

3. Every other Jesuit who had any knowledge or any suspicion of any sexual misconduct with vulnerable populations by fellow Jesuits, and failed to take action sufficient to protect actual and potential victims.

My assumption is that group three is the most populous. My guess is that, at least in America, that the total of the three groups equals a huge percentage of all Jesuits.

The various bishops and heads of orders have so persistently hidden evidence, and in many cases helped accused priests abscond, that the only way it get to the bottom of the problem is through RICO prosecutions of the very highest Church officials reachable by US law.

The bishops and the raping priests are not the worst of the problem. It’s group three that makes the organization truly corrupt.

There’s a cross-dressing motif that would make a hilarious satyr-play to this tragedy if it weren’t for the seriousness of the case.

According to this story, one of the Jesuit priests accused of molesting the two retarded guys, Father Angel Mariano, S.J., is a transvestite who had earlier been arrested for performing sex acts on teenage boys while dressed as a woman.

Of course, the conviction and jail sentence hadn’t cost him his job with the Jesuits.

So the subtext is one of incredible insult to women. The Jesuits consider this clown, Mariano, who must register with local authorities as a sex offender for the rest of his life, more worthy to be a priest than the holiest, most erudite, most competent woman in the world.

According to numerous reports, increasing percentages of priests being ordained in the USA are from second and third-world countries, where the priesthood is still seen as a respectable, even prestigious profession.

Pathetic that the Catholic priesthood has become one of those “jobs that Americans won’t do.”

----- o -----

JESUIT WATCH, LITERALLY!

A man and a woman have been missing in Oregon for almost two weeks, according to this Chronicle story.

The missing woman is a 61 year old civil servant from the Bay Area. The missing man is a Jesuit priest, 52, from Southern California.

Described as “traveling companions,” and “old dear friends,” the two seem to have been sharing a motel room.

The two kept a detailed journal and left an itinerary with the priest's mother, Kent said. Police found the journal in their hotel room Tuesday, along with their luggage…

I know what you’re thinking, but, scandal-schmandal!

Just because they’re sharing a hotel room doesn’t mean they’re having sex. And, taking separate rooms (at considerably greater expense) would not mean that they weren’t having sex, although it might have made such a claim more plausible.

But, who cares! Given their ages it’s kind of charming, like Charles and Camilla.

----- o -----

SOUTH VIETNAM--DEDICATED TO VIRGIN MARY

America’s neo-colonial war of aggression on the people of Vietnam was spearheaded by members of the Roman Catholic Church.

Ngo Dinh Diem, first president of South Vietnam, not a country but a short-lived cartographic fiction, was a Roman Catholic, a protégé of America’s prince of darkness, Francis Cardinal Spellman.

Diem’s brother was a prominent Catholic priest in Vietnam (later Cardinal). Diem’s family had converted to Catholicism in order to suck French colonial (Catholic) ass.

Diem did many bad things including suppression of the Buddhist majority. At least 70% of South Vietnamese were Buddhist. From Wikipedia:

The Catholic church was the largest landowner in the country, and the "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to conduct public Buddhist activities, were not repealed by Diem. The land owned by the Catholic church was exempt from land reform. Catholics were also de facto exempt from the corvee labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform and distributed US aid disproportionately to Catholic majority villages. Under Diem, the Catholic church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, Diem dedicated his country to the Virgin Mary.

It was this suppression of Buddhists by Diem’s Catholic regime, including raids on their temples, that inspired the monks to immolate themselves so famously in the Streets of Saigon.

Read about Diem, another devout Roman Catholic/mass murderer, in Wikipedia here.

----- o -----

NORBERT WHO?

The tone of Jesuit Watch can be sharp, even harsh.

Sometimes I feel like a mean old man snatching teddy bears from the arms of terrified children, leaving them with nothing but their fears.

A commenter recently stated that the Roman Catholic Church has done way more good than bad in the world.

And we all sort of let that statement go. But it deserves to be harshly refuted, so:

I assert that the world would be a better place if the Roman Catholic Church had never existed.

What’s a Roman Catholic to do, who wakes up to find:

-the whole Bible story, from Eden to Pentecost, is poppycock,
-the RC hierarchy is corrupt, hypocritical, self serving
-the American (possibly worldwide) RC hierarchy has promoted and now covers up child sex abuse by priests,
-the RCC is totally messed up on the sex thing,
-the liturgy is no fun, and,
-most importantly, the love shared among the congregants is minimal.

Well, first thing, leave the church.

Then what?

Find something else to do with your time. This could include the exploration of spiritual issues through philosophy, art, or other religious traditions. Find your karass(es). The RCC, according to Bokononism is a granfaloon.

A group I keep coming across is the UUs. They’re a non-religion in the etymological sense of ligature. They seem to be in favor of religious freedom and the sharing of spiritual truths and insights whatever their source.

I came across a website by a UU guy. I think he’s some sort of UU minister. His voice, in describing his visit to a Gay Pride parade, is cheerful and demonstrates the neglected middle virtue.

I followed a link on that site to a biography of Norbert Capek, a hero of Unitarian Universalism. You gotta love the bow tie, and he DIDN’T cooperate with the Nazi’s.

Capek started as a Catholic, became a Baptist, then became a powerhouse in the Unitarian Universalist movement.

A couple of quotes from the bio.

The church's task, he felt, "must be to place truth above any tradition, spirit above any scripture, freedom above authority, and progress above all reaction."

His was a sun-drenched, pre-Holocaust faith, one that sustained thousands of his compatriots during the darkness of Nazi occupation, 1939-45. His faith enabled him to endure his own martyrdom with an equanimity and heroism confirmed by survivors of the concentration camp in Dachau who knew him there.

UU won’t work for people who love the authoritarian structure of the RCC. For them there are plenty of other authoritarian organizations to choose from.

The homepage of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (UK) contains this blurb:

WE BELIEVE THAT:

– everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves.

– the fundamental tools for doing this are your own life experience, your reflection upon it, your intuitive understanding and the promptings of your own conscience.

– the best setting for this is a community that welcomes you for who you are, complete with your beliefs, doubts and questions.

It sounds like a religion for grown-ups.

Contrast that with the Balitmore Catechism:

10. Q. How shall we know the things which we are to believe?
A. We shall know the things which we are to believe from the Catholic Church, through which God speaks to us.

----- o -----

THE LAST JESUIT

Below is a little blurb from CWN.

Jesuit order diminishing in numbers

Rome, Jun. 14, 2007
(CWNews.com) - The Jesuit order diminished in size by 364 men in 2006, the Fides news service reports.

In the last calendar year, 486 men joined the Society of Jesus. But 472 Jesuits died, and 378 men left the religious order, accounting for the drop in numbers.

There are 19,216 Jesuits in the world today, by the latest count. The average age among Jesuits worldwide is now over 57.

The spreadsheet below summarizes the figures in this story and calculates, based on the 2006 rate of decrease, that in 2061 the last Jesuit will die or leave the order.

----- o -----

FAMILY

We, of Nature’s cruelest choosings, are
the favored heirs, our wealth the savage gift
of mere existence—cold, tainted cash
we fear to spend, but take weird pride bequeathing.

© Copyright 2007 William Morrissey All Rights Reserved

[Previously posted on sfwillie's blog.]

BEST ADVICE

One day Jesus addressed a group of small-businessmen, something about mustard seeds.

After the talk there was time for questions and answers. One of the businessmen seemed to speak for the group. “Jesus,” he said, “ we think you’re a great guy, and what you say sounds good. But we’re all busy, day and night, trying to support our wives and children. Margins are thin, taxes are fat, we're struggling just to stay in business.

“We want to do the right thing when it comes to God and religion and all, but it seems so complicated. We aren’t bible-scholars, we’re traders and craftsmen. We’d like to study more, and pray more, but heck, there’s only so much time in the day.

“Could you, Jesus, gives us your one most important piece of advice?”

“Sure,” Jesus said, “Actually it’s two pieces of advice, but they’re related.

“First,” Jesus said, “love God as much as you possibly can.

“Number two—love other people just like you love yourself.”

Another attendee stood up. “That sounds too simple, what about the rest of the laws and teachings?”

“Just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo invented by lazy priests to justify their existence,” Jesus said.

The last statement was removed from the New Testament, for obvious reasons, but it really pissed off the high priests and eventually got Jesus killed.

----- o -----

GAY PRIESTS

The most disturbing article I’ve read since starting Jesuit Watch appeared on the blog Clerical Whispers.

The Gay Priest Problem, discusses (and criticizes) the persistence of homosexual activity by and among American Catholic priests and seminarians. It comes out swinging. In the second paragraph it references a Kansas City Star report:

The death rate of priests from AIDS is at least four times that of the general population, the newspaper said. Kansas City Bishop Raymond Boland says the AIDS deaths show that priests are human.

This is something I never really thought about—gay priests and seminarians who engage in anal intercourse should use condoms, just like the rest of us.

If you’re one of those who think the whole celibacy thing is creepy, this article explains why your skin sort of crawls.

The author is attacking the Catholic hierarchy hard, but from the right, as in this bare-knuckle passage:

From almost all sides one heard the complaint “Why doesn't somebody do something?” Why not indeed.

A large part of the answer is implicit in the remarkable response to the situation tendered by Bishop Boland. To aver that a priest shows he is human by dying of AIDS is to say either that yielding to this sort of temptation is something that might happen to any normal person or that it is somehow natural to our human state to engage in acts of passive consensual sodomy, from which the resultant infection takes its predictable course.

The author’s solution to this problem is to purge the clergy of all homosexuals and all who support gay sex in any way.

The solution proposed by Jesuit Watch is for the Catholic Church to completely revamp its sexual morality. [Catholic sexual morality would make sense if humans had the sex drive of pandas.]

Clerical Whispers estimates the number of gay priests at shocking levels.

Gay priests themselves—who, though admittedly partisan, admittedly also have unique access to the facts—commonly assure us that they are legion within the priesthood in general and well-represented even among bishops.

Obviously, they have an interest in exaggerating their numbers—for both psychological and political reasons. But the Kansas City Star series mentioned above notes that, of 26 novices who entered the Missouri Province of the Jesuit order in 1967 and 1968, only seven were eventually ordained priests. Of these seven, three have (to date) died of AIDS, and a fourth is an openly gay priest now working as an artist in New York.

Later, the author proposes specific steps. Talk about a hard-ass:

Restore simplicity to priestly life. Physical comfort is the oxygen that feeds the fires of homosexual indulgence. Cut it off.

When you enter a rectory, take a look at the liquor cabinet, the videos, the wardrobe, the slick magazines, and ask yourself, “Do I get the impression that the man who lives here is in the habit of saying no to himself?” If the answer is negative, the chances are that his life of chastity is in disorder as well. It goes without saying that reforming bishops should lead by example in this department and not simply exhort.

I believe it was J Sobrino, S.J., who scoffed at the idea of theology being written in air conditioned rooms.

Recently I mentioned this article to a lady (Lutheran) in my tennis group. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “my husband spent a year in a Paulist seminary. He said it’s all gay.”

Her kids went to St Ignatius, my alma, “but the Jesuits teach contraception,” she assured me.

----- o -----

DID POPE KILL ALLIES?

According to Wikipedia he was in an anti-aircraft unit of the Wehrmacht then in some infantry unit. This AP whitewash published in 2005 emphasizes that while J. Ratzinger, Jr, indeed was a member of the Hitler Youth and then Hitler’s Army, he was always unenthusiastic.

Not mentioned is any instance of any sanction he received for doing anything other than participate loyally in the two organizations.

Also not mentioned are the future pope’s actual duties in the German Army. Did he ever actually fire a gun or cannon or missile or ack-ack at any Allied soldiers or airmen?

If so, did he ever hit one of them? Maybe kill a British or Canadian or American soldier? Or two, or three?

I grew up on stories of early Christian martyrs devoured by lions for refusing to place the pinch of salt. We were taught that death is not bad, sin is bad.

According to the AP article, the young Ratzinger couldn’t resist the Nazis in any way because there would have been negative consequences.

Now Ratzinger in his role as Pope is honoring the death of an Austrian man who was beheaded for refusing to join Hitler’s army. Here’s the Yahoo/AP lead, story here.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI approved recognition of martyrdom for an Austrian who was beheaded by the Nazis for refusing to serve in Hitler's army, a step toward possible sainthood.

This leaves young people with contradictory models. When faced with the requirement to join the army of a genocidal madman bent on world conquest, should one:

A) Refuse, like Franz Jaegerstaetter, and become headless, or

B) Comply, like Josef Ratzinger, and become Pope?

----- o -----

GIVING TO GOD

CNA has an amusing story on the “Spirituality of Tithing” out of Apericida, with this lead:

In his homily during Mass at the 5th General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council, Archbishop Ubaldo Santana of Maracaibo (Venezuela) said “the spirituality of thankfully giving back” that is, tithing, consists in giving back “that which belongs to God.”

It’s pretty clear from the rest of the story that the A’bishop was talking about cash donations to the Roman Catholic Church.

An overly literal Catholic might write a check made payable to “Jesus of Nazareth” and mail it in an envelope address to “Heaven.”

Of course, that not what Ubaldo was talking about. He really wants Catholics to make the checks payable to “The Catholic Church,” and mail them to some priest or other.

There is an obvious problem.

If (give to Jesus) = (give to RCC)
Then Jesus = RCC

And if Jesus = God
Then RCC = God

This is the problem with theocracies. God can’t rule directly, but only through human beings.

To refer to an organization run by human beings as a theocracy is obvious blasphemy.

----- o -----

WHY THE JESUITS?

Jesuit Watch is flattered to have an anonymous commenter.

In his or her first comments, to Boys, 7-12, Anon wanted to know why we're interested in the Jesuits, (“vendetta,” “animosity”).

Then he or she took issue with our answer to the question, “Why do rich people like the Jesuits?” This is on the post, Wealthy with Grace.

My first contact with Jesuit educators is detailed in the classic post, Mr Slimeball, S.J. It still pisses me off to think about that incident.

At SI we had a winning football coach named Vince Tringali. His approach was to identify the pillar of the opponent’s defense and run plays right at him until he crumbled.

The Society is the pillar of the pope’s defense.

Also, the Jesuits are supposed to be smart. If I'm going to do some rattling, I might as well pick the cage of the scariest beast in the zoo.


WHY THIS BLOG?

My friend sfmike says Jesuit Watch is useful to teenage and young adult Catholics who are questioning their faith.

----- o -----