Dumbed down on way to Bethlehem

Has the Scripture prescribed for reading at mass been dumbed down since Vatican 2? Here’s the gospel for today, Saturday of the First Week of Advent:

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness.

At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.

Then he summoned his Twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out
and to cure every disease and every illness.

Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus,
Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation: The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.

That’s Mt 9:3510:1, 5a, 6-8, New American Bible. Here’s the passage, same verses, from the 1962 (and earlier) Bible, the only point of comparison, since the 1962 daily readings were skimpy to nonexistent:

And Jesus went about all the cities, and towns, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease, and every infirmity.

[36] And seeing the multitudes, he had compassion on them: because they were distressed, and lying like sheep that have no shepherd. [37] Then he saith to his disciples, The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. [38] Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.

[1] And having called his twelve disciples together, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of diseases, and all manner of infirmities.

[5] These twelve Jesus sent: commanding them, saying: Go ye not into the way of the Gentiles [and into the city of the Samaritans enter ye not]. [6] But go ye rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. [7] And going, preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. [8] Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils: freely have you received, freely give.

I submit that the pedestrian has replaced the sonorous, I’d call it rhythmic. The 1962 Bible (Douay-Rheims) called for a reader-aloud with some oratorical training, which has its pitfalls, yes. But this reading the daily newspaper at us (so it comes across) has nothing to stir souls.

McGuire loses again

Donald McGuire, ex-SJ, loses his [court] appeal:

CHICAGO (AP) A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Jesuit priest on charges he traveled abroad and across state lines to have sex with a teenager.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on Thursday rejected Donald McGuire’s argument that, while the sex occurred, sex wasn’t the purpose of the travel.

McGuire is serving a 25-year prison sentence. The 80-year-old has also been convicted in Wisconsin for indecent behavior with a child.

McGuire once commanded a worldwide following as a gifted preacher. And he frequently travelled to retreats.

In a 12-page opinion, Judge Richard Posner concedes statutes indicating sex must be a primary reason for the travel cause confusion. But he writes it’s enough to show McGuire planned trips specifically to improve his chances of having sex.

Pope on condoms — and on what else?

Phil Lawler at CatholicCulture.org comes up with something else from the book with the pope-on-condoms item:

If you want to drum up controversy on the basis of one quote pulled out of the Pope’s book-length interview Light of the World, how about this one, found on page 152:

Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.

Unlike the now-famous quotation about condom use, this sentence isn’t pulled out of context. The Pope isn’t merely speculating. He isn’t raising a possible objection or exception to his own argument. His point is clear.

Thing is, he’s talking about his own institution, where among the clergy there may be no hotter issue.

The pope and condoms

Pope Benedict XVI in Sydney for World Youth Da... — Done in by incompetents?

Canadian pro-lifer Steve Jalsevac has discovered “the greatest and most damaging incident of Vatican media incompetence that has probably ever happened,” citing CatholicCulture.org’s Phil Lawler, who wrote of “public-relations bungling at the Vatican,” and Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput, who wrote of “baffling failures of some [of the pope’s] aides” — both in regard to the pope’s condom-approval comments.

Adventures in worship

Church in the park — Not my church but a very nice one

This morning at mass, I was miles away and completely unaware — 8:30 mass and not at all crowded — when I came to and stood and saw a hand reaching out for mine from my left, in the pew in front of me. It was Our Father time.

I took the hand with my left, holding on to the pew with my right. This matters. I don’t fall down a lot, in fact not at all lately, in part because I do not ask too much of my balance. But the guy two rows up, having grasped his friend’s hand with his left, was leaning back, looking at me and extending his right — across an entire pew.

I tried to shake him off, but he persisted, and I finally had to stage-whisper, “Too far!” He pulled back, but by then I was not saying The Lord’s Prayer very well, in fact not at all, having narrowly missed a dangerous balancing act.

The prayer was over in a few more seconds, I dropped the hand to my left and put both hands on the pew in front, breathing a sigh. In a minute, the handclasp of peace. The woman whose hand I’d held, having witnessed my shaking off the man’s hand, put hers out tentatively. I grasped it gingerly, fingers to fingers, having incipient arthritic issues and being in general not the hand-shaker I used to be.

And of course I had to do the same for the guy two rows in front, including a wink and a nod as salve to whatever feelings I had hurt (none, I decided), and that was that for my going-the-extra-mile worship procedures for the day.

Oh yes, I’m afraid I didn’t meet the searching eyes of the woman giving communion as she seemed to expect, so that our souls might if ever so briefly coincide and commune, because, I must confess, my chief interest was in Jesus, with whom I was trying desperately to make contact. In any case, I got in my “Amen” for her, I think before she said her piece, and she placed the host on my palm.

Back I went to my pew, hands not folded but at my sides, for balance’ sake. It’s better that way, you know. I mean the high-wire man does not hold his hands folded in front, and neither do I returning from communion.

Notre Dame’s selective prosecution

Dennis Byrne hits on the prosecution of 88 protesters, in a column about Notre Dame’s abdication of responsibility for the attempted rape of a St. Mary’s woman:

While leaving to its own police force to investigate the sexual assault charges it quickly handed over to the local prosecutor the case of 88 people who were arrested by school police for peacefully demonstrating on campus the selection of anti-life president Barack Obama as an honored commencement speaker. The schools determination to punish the demonstrators can only be described as spiteful and obsessive.

The Notre Dame 88, which included a nun and an elderly priest, face penalties of up to a year in prison and fines of $5,000. The Chicago-based Thomas More Society, a pro-life law firm, is defending the protestors without charge. The university technically can claim that calling off the prosecution is out of their hands, but at the same time, it has not used its so-called prestige to seek Christian charity for the protestors.

“What in hell is going on?” Byrne asks. So do I.

Leave the assault to us, they say, following up on it not a whit. But those protesters must pay. Why not the other way around?

Hanging crepe in RC leftville

It kills RC libs that one of their own, of the Joe Bernardin camp, got voted out of his heir apparency the other day by U.S. bishops, and no one says it better than NC Reporter’s Thomas C. Fox, who lays it on thickly.

I find myself thinking about Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., and how he must feel at this time. Whats going on inside him, really going on despite the good face he has put on to the world in the wake of the surprise, historic, and unprecedented rejection by his fellow U.S. bishops.

They “broke with four decades of precedent and essentially threw [him] out,” leaving Fox in a funk:

I cannot help but feel that the bishops hurt a good man along the way, and in the process revealed some things about themselves – at least the majority in their ranks did – that is less than admirable.

The rats! They “walked over a fellow bishop, by most accounts a decent man. . . . their vote . . . lacked a sense of civility and even perhaps charity.”

“Some on the right” are to blame, but so is the new man, Timothy Dolan of NYC, whom Fox skewers with deft thrusts:

Ive been reading that Dolan has a good wit and keen ability and will probably make a good president. But he arrives with a tarnished garment. I wish he [had] told his fellow bishops . . . that he was not available, that he was willing to wait his turn, that he could learn in the next three years, just like all his predecessors. He would have been a fine vice-president.

Well Fox did not see his wish fulfilled. C’est la vie. In any case, if Dolan had done as Fox wishes he did, he

would have taught us all a lesson in thoughtfulness and civility. It was a teachable moment. Instead we learned our bishops act [like] most other ends-oriented men in other political organizations.

If Fox learned that much, the teachable moment was not entirely lost.

Meanwhile, Kicanas demonstrated a “strong upper lip” in his concession statement:

[Dolan] has been a long time friend . . . [possesses] great wit, jovial spirit, keen ability to relate to people in a deeply personal way . . . exceptional leadership qualities. . . .

Good. I look forward to his leadership. But it doesn’t mean there is joy in Catholic leftism, which has lost a friend in a high place, it thinks. Sob.

Dolan’s coming . . .

Archbishop Timothy Dolan Greets Rangel — Dolan and Rangel chat.

. . . to a pulpit or classroom near you. From what a Princeton U. conservative scholar calls “the capital of the world.” As new top U.S. bishop for next three years, he is bound to be heard and seen.

“. . . [T]he bishops have decided to opt for a confident Catholicism,” [the scholar, Robert] George said. “They had a choice, and they chose the boldest, most outspoken bishop. You wouldn’t choose him as your leader unless you thought what he was doing in the capital of the world (New York) is what we want the church to represent.”

That “confident Catholicism” sounds good. Let’s see how it plays.

Loosey-goosey with viewpoint

ChiTrib’s Manya Brachear tips her hand:

Just in time for parishioners to pass the plate this weekend and raise funds for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are expected Tuesday to tighten guidelines for giving financial support to groups that empower the poor.

Tighten? From whose perspective? Not from that of Catholics and others who see anomaly in RC funding of groups that flout RC teaching.

Brachear’s “tighten” remains in her lede in this story — about reverting to the community-organizing bias of Catholic Campaign for Human Development decision-makers — but it’s gone from the online head, where the home-delivery hard copy “tighten” becomes “adjust.”

Catholic bishops adjusting guidelines for funding programs in campaign against poverty

is indeed more like it.

So somebody’s minding the store at the Trib, trying to save the day, though you can hardly blame the hard-copy editors for going with the lede in its head, “Catholic bishops tighten rules on aid for poor.”

Point? Why does Brachear thinks it’s a tightening when it’s a loosening — relaxing a ban on giving money to abortion-referring organizations and the like?

Catholic campaign for human what and how?

The annual Campaign for Human Development collection is coming up for Catholics Nov. 20–21:

WHY WAIT UNTIL NOVEMBER? – DONATE TODAY!
Your tax-deductible contributions can always be mailed directly to our office at anytime. This method guarantees that you will receive a tax-deduction letter mailed directly to you right away.

Make checks payable to “The Chicago CCHD” and mail them to:

Chicago CCHD – Attn: Rey Flores . . . . .

But what’s above has been scrubbed. Rey Flores doesn’t work there any more, having been fired a few weeks ago as the Chicago campaign’s director and replaced by an aide, Interim Program Director Tamara Fedoryshyn. Flores had worked out a compromise with pro-lifers who protested grants to anti-life-connected groups. His guidelines for 2011 grants remain on site —

. . . . Projects must address poverty with respect to Catholic values and must conform to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

Organizations must use Chicago CCHD funding solely for the purpose stated in their application and cannot participate in any activity contrary to Catholic teaching (i.e. abortion, non-traditional marriage, euthanasia, racism, support for the death penalty, etc.). . . . .

— with Flores as contact person, but Fedoryshyn is the new contact person everywhere else, and archdiocesan blog items by Floressay he was the program director.

The removal happened some time after Oct. 2, when he led the annual Justice Day at Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica. No hint was given by anyone on that occasion that Flores was tagged for demolition. He was apparently sandbagged.

Also present and prominent in the day’s activities, celebrating and preaching at the mid-day mass, was Fr. Larry Dowling, pastor of St. Agatha parish in Lawndale, whose Nov. 2 letter to Cardinal George referred to Flores in the past tense as Chicago CCHD’s “former director.”

The letter was a statement of counter-protest, Dowling (a dean and consultor to the cardinal) speaking for a number of priests who found the changes on Flores’s watch grossly incompatible with CCHD tradition and principles. He accused Flores of inflicting “great damage” that included

false information about CCHD . . . disseminated by those who oppose the Church’s promotion of empowering the poor. . . . . a lack of proper vetting and formation of new members of the CCHD selection team. . . . an attempt to limit the funding of community organizing in general. . . .

The letter is a plea for community organizing rather than direct service to the poor, quoting Flores, “Community organizing takes too long. We’re going to concentrate on direct service.”

The letter complains about

lay people [on a newly constituted selection committee] who openly described CCHD as defective and ‘needing fixing.’ One member was quoted as saying, “The Church really needs to drop the term ‘social justice’ and concentrate on direct service”

but calls for “a selection process that engages lay people,” apparently meaning lay people who agree with these priests about what’s to be done.

Flores got the ax at some point between Justice Day and Dowling-letter day, making October a bad month for him — and it seems for pro-lifers’ efforts to change how money is distributed.

The letter is a case apparently of striking while the iron is hot — moving to reverse immediately the changes of 2010. If it’s a sign of how the wind is blowing in the organizing-vs.-service controversy — we might say Alinsky vs. Dorothy Day — the future looks bleak for the “real reform” of CCHD practices brokered by Flores in response to objections by Catholic Citizens of Illinois and other groups.

Do non-profits usually operate this way? Bounce a program director without a by-your-leave to their donating publics?

Is this non-profit (the archdiocese) slipping something past its public only weeks before the big giving day — the Nov. 20–21 weekend in the Catholic churches of two counties?

It’s something of more than passing interest to the inquiring pew-sitter.

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