Blogwatcher - Vatican Provides No Comfort for Irish Bishops, by Michael Mullins, The Cathnews, September 4, 2011

Blogwatcher - Vatican Provides No Comfort for Irish Bishops

By Michael Mullins
The Cathnews
September 4, 2011

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=27998

dotCommonweal comments on the Vatican's detailed response to the Irish Cloyne Report's charge that it "gave comfort" to those within the Irish church who opposed the Irish bishops' 1996 framework for dealing with allegations of clergy sexual abuse. Its blogger Paul Moses says the Bishops "rolled over under pressure from the media [and naively] expected Rome to endorse them".

"While the Vatican maintains that it wanted to improve the Irish bishops' document so that disciplinary cases against accused priests would not be dismissed on technicalities in canon law, its "serious reservations" over over the morality of mandatory reporting seem to suggest opposition to the guidelines rather than an interest in making them airtight. The quote from Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos simply advises bishops not to obstruct justice; it doesn't say they should report abuse allegations to the police."

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In a similar vein, the National Catholic Reporter's John Allen concludes his account of the response with a quote from one prominent Irish victim, Marie Collins, who said the Vatican's defence highlighted the need for Ireland to pass a law making the non-reporting of suspected child abuse a specific crime.

"'As long as it's not there, the church can defend its own actions as the document does,' she said."

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Country Deacon questions the "passive aggressive" response of World Youth Day pilgrims to protesters at the event (pictured):

"On the one hand, pilgrims kneeling down and praying the rosary in the face of intimidation and abuse is good optics. Non-violent resistance is always impressive. But on the other hand, that behaviour also transforms prayer into some sort of passive-aggressive weapon… At the very least, it's a showy sort of prayer which our Lord discouraged."

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The Divine Wedgie argues that consumer culture is to blame for the political drive to keep asylum seekers offshore.

"Consumer culture, which celebrates the kingship of commodities, is a culture that engages in a cult of the surface and glorifies visibility.

"This cult of surface and visibility has become so ingrained in the public consciousness that it even bears political implications. Those political matters that matter now are those that are given greater visibility. Conversely, those that lack such visibility are rendered powerless in shaping political discourses and policy. By shipping off asylum seekers offshore, both sides of politics are at one level removing the seeming inconvenience they seemingly pose to the smooth operation of our consumerist lifestyles, but at another level they are also attempting to remove the capacity of asylum seekers to lay claim on our consciousness."

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Fr Chris Ryan of Seeing Swans at Night reflects on what the parishioners of Woomera did to restore and nurture the dignity of those behind the fences.

"They visited people who had no-one to visit them. When they weren't allowed to visit, they wrote letters and gave clothes… It was their conviction that even those who were illegal immigrants still possessed a dignity that demanded a more humane treatment of them. They did also point out however that, officially, eighty per cent of all those imprisoned in Woomera were judged to be genuine refugees."

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The National Catholic Reporter's Michael Sean Winters accuses "Catholic neo-cons" of being cafeteria Catholics on issues of social justice, where they claim "there is room for prudential judgment".

"So good Catholics can disagree, while on abortion, there is no room for prudential judgment. This is how they avoid the charge of being cafeteria Catholics.

But, it doesn't fly. .. On social justice issues, like abortion, there can be no denying the moral imperative to fight injustice and to defend the poor and the vulnerable. The room for prudential judgment comes when we debate different methods of helping the poor or the aged or the unborn. Prudential judgment is not a conversation stopper..

Admit it, neo-cons. You like the Catholic cafeteria as much as anybody."

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Marissa at Micah Challenge writes on C.S. Lewis' insistence that we should "give more than we can spare".

"Some say, as Lewis points out, that we shouldn't give to the poor because we should focus on avenues like economic growth and income generation in order to reach development. Others, including Lewis, point to the ideal society that God intended for Israel… Unfortunately however, history has shown that this kind of society isn't too easy to achieve and it's unlikely to happen any time soon.. To Lewis, the only response to a world that refuses to promote justice is to 'give more than we can spare'."

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Give us this day writes about Ramadan, Islam's month of fasting and prayer, under the heading "Muslims do it, Buddhists do it, why don't Christians do it?" Paddy MacLachlan says:

"At lunch yesterday in a busy, well populated noodle bar, I happened to watch one of the waitresses clamber up onto a chair to tidy up the shrine.. She stopped for a minute or so, palms pressed together and eyes closed, to offer a prayer of her own. Needless to say, nobody batted an eyelid. These things.. are as much a part of the fabric of life as saying hello. But in any 'civilised' Christian country, any such act would be seen as horrifying, fanatical, ostentatious, comical."

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In the context of the introduction of the new translation of the liturgy, Sentire Cum Ecclesia quotes Islamic expert Fr Dan Madigan SJ, who raises that classic corrective that the true correspondence is not Muhummed/Jesus or Koran/Bible, but Koran/Word-of-God/Jesus.

"In this connection, he made the comment: 'The true sacred language of the Church is the flesh'. True, nicht wahr?"

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In The Tablet, the historian Michael Walsh blogs on the new translation, suggesting that "the exact repetition of sacred texts is Harry-Potterish magic, not religion. I was amused to see L'Osservatore Romano recently praising the Baptist scripture scholar Eugene Nida for translating the Bible not word-for-word but thought-for-thought. Tell that to the liturgists."

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Could the disconsolate Australia Incognita be rising from the dead? The blog, which has been password protected and therefore inaccessible to the public for some time, has carried the enigmatic descriptor: "This blog is dead. All we like sheep". A rare post carries links to "petitions to the Pope in favour of orthodoxy and in support of decision to remove Bishop Morris".

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In asking why Catholics have big families Phil Lawler of Catholic Culture insists that Catholicism doesn't cause childbirth.

"They love one another, and the human body is designed so that when a man loves a woman, the birth of children will ordinarily ensue—unless the couple takes steps to prevent that natural result. Yes, it's true that the Catholic Church encourages parents to welcome children. But in giving that encouragement, the Church is only recommending that we do what nature intended. In much the same way, the Church might encourage Catholics to eat healthy foods."