Religion in church, temple, mosque, public life
This would be your classic case of people talking about what they don’t know much, and I’m someone who thinks this fellow knows a lot about his speciality.
Pope urges lifestyle changes to save environment
Pope’s ‘green’ message
Fri, Jan 1 2010VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict used his traditional New Year address on Friday to call on people to change their lifestyles to save the planet, saying environmental responsibility was essential for global peace.
Shoemaker, stick to your last!
This non-worshiping Jewish lady, a born-again conservative like me, did a bold thing on Christmas Eve: she went to mass.
Beyond the music and pageantry, what moved me the most was being with hundreds of people who loved God. Maybe some were questioning his presence or feeling abandoned. But they showed up, and that’s half of life.
Yes.
You can hear a king somewhere complaining to his courtiers, “Who will rid me of this [troublesome] issue?” (See “Becket”)
In a letter to senators Wednesday, leaders of the influential U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated their opposition [to Sen. Reid’s bill], contending the Senate language “violates the long-standing federal policy against the use of federal funds for elective abortions.”
Go bishops? Not so fast:
A lot is being said and written about why national health care legislation is becoming a reality. The simple fact, available for all to see, is that the U.S. Catholic Bishops ensured passage of the bill in the House, enabling the Senate to move forward with its version.
Huh?
Like “progressive” strategist Robert B. Creamer, the Bishops believe that health care is a right to be guaranteed by government. This position has driven the debate and has rarely been challenged by Republicans. The debate over abortion has been mostly a diversion. Perhaps it has been planned that way
Thus spake Cliff Kincaid, persuasively, I am sorry to say.
As we were the first to disclose, Creamer, an ex-con and husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, emphasized using “the faith community” to mobilize support for universal health care by highlighting the morality of providing medical care to people in need. His book, Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win, emphasized that “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
Bishops are on same page:
“Our approach to health care is shaped by a simple but fundamental principle: ‘Every person has a right to adequate health care,'” they say. They go on, “For three quarters of a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have called for national action to assure decent health care for all Americans. We seek to bring a moral perspective in an intensely political debate; we offer an ethical framework in an arena dominated by powerful economic interests.”
So:
At least five lobbyists for the Bishops worked with Pelosi and Stupak on the deal that is now also predictably falling apart. Clearly, the pro-life deal was a ploy designed to keep the legislation alive.
Etc.
Read it and weep, all ye Catholics and others who with Dorothy Day are not ready to look lovingly or even resignedly to Holy Mother the State for health, welfare, and who knows what else.
See also Tom Roeser’s informed and pungent report cum commentary on “tricky Reid language” in his bill and the role of a “so-called pro-lifer” in that sorry development, including Tom’s closer in context of payoffs to compliant senators by White House paymaster Rahm Emanuel:
The Nebraska-Nelson windfall
spurred lawmakers from other states to complain “hey. Why should my state have to take the mandate and Nebraska gets away with it?” One hope is that this would lead to a flurry of lawmakers trying to get their states exempted which means that in the White House, the wily old paymaster, Emanuel, may have to throw up his hands and turn them down…either that or run the cash register repeatedly to buy everybody off…spurring the old hymn to take on a new meaning:
“Come, O Come, Emanuel!”
Which reminds me, it’s Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas, everyone!
When the rubber hits the road, Jesuit obedience lives!
It was with a grim face that my Jesuit superior informed me and the community that I am being removed from my current ministry. This news caused great consternation and confusion for several community members: what was it that I had done? What could I possibly have done in less than four months to merit such an abrupt removal from my job?
Stiff upper lip in the work of Christ the King.
The RC bishop of Madison WI, a Big Ten city, is diverting contribs to ACORN-besmirched Catholic Campaign for Human Devel:
As he did last year, Bishop [Robert C.] Morlino chose to allocate the national campaign’s portion of the collection to a different cause.
Last year, the funds were sent to the Hurricane Ike recovery fund, and this year he allocated the contributions to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have an international outreach to the elderly.
Millions for the Little Sisters, not one cent for community organizing! (Thousands?)
He’s one of “at least” four bps who diverted $ from CCHD this time around. The others:
Bishop John O. Barres of Allentown, Pennsylvania; Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska; . . . and Bishop Robert J. Baker of Birmingham, Alabama.
This even after
Bishop Roger Morin [New Orleans], chairman of the USCCB’s subcommittee on the CCHD, delivered a passionate plea to the bishops’ plenary meeting last week, pledging the CCHD’s commitment to ensure grantees’ respect for Catholic teaching.
They didn’t believe him. Or did not take him seriously. Tsk, tsk.
Was it a media blitz in the last few days, the coverage of the Wheeling Jesuit University president-firing and the aftermath?
Not quite, but the WJU board and its acting president did come out of hiding, smoked out by mass-medium coverage of slam-bang accusations by a high-profile West Virginian whom the mediums all know about. (He’s in the clips.)
The bishop didn’t do it, the acting president and board spokeswoman trumpeted, speaking for themselves and for the Jesuit provincial superior, Rev. James M. Shea, SJ, of Towson, MD.
Indeed, Fr. Shea has approved the behavior of his three fellow Jesuits — the local superior, the president of another Jesuit university, and the operator of a Pennsylvania retreat house, each a “trustee” of WJU — pretty much since they gave a fourth Jesuit, also a trustee, the boot in absentia as WJU president while apparently keeping a fifth out of the loop lest he veto the ouster.
To be kept in mind is the first rule of home-office-based executives, not to second-guess operators in the field. They are home-office appointees, for one thing, and are on the scene, for another, while executives are not. To top it off, the executive in this case has neither interest in nor (probably) stomach for an independent investigation.
If there’s something rotten in the state of West Virginia, he relies on local authorities to tell him. It takes more than indignation expressed and accusations made by local non-Jesuits to get him, the provincial, off a dime.
Besides, in this case he is a lifelong chaplain and pastor, most recently pastor of the Jesuits’ Georgetown (DC) parish. He’s a pastor, with all the one-on-one impulses and expertise that implies — with a doctorate in pastoral care from Southern Methodist, no less. It’s his specialty.
He ran a parish in a sophisticated neighborhood — no small thing — but university administration and politics he probably knows from rec-room chatter and the like, to judge by his resume.
It should never have been in doubt, therefore, that he would endorse the WJU ouster, as sloppily as it was conducted, if not deceitfully. On the other hand, when anguished cries from West Virginia arrived by U.S. mail, it might have been hoped, if not expected, that he would revert to a tried and true pastoral approach and write back; but he did not.
It’s a jungle out here, true. SNAP and their lawyers wait to haul him before a civil court. Money is at stake. Oregon Province has declared bankruptcy. In Seattle the Jesuit university president, a former provincial, is being sued for keeping under his hat the abuse of hundreds of Eskimos by dozens of Jesuits.
The Maryland Provincial can be like the Huron Indians of 400 years ago who took it on the chin for Jesus’ sake and went out of business, destroyed by the un-Jesus-like Iroquois, as the movie “Black Robe” would have it. Or he can be very, very careful, giving nothing his enemies might use against him.
He can sit on letters and say nothing, not even when he has something to say, leaving it to non-Jesuit officialdom to pass on his approval of the mysterious WJU firing. He himself stays out of it — or did until today, when he presided at the St. Joseph Pignatelli liturgy on campus. Perhaps more later about that pregnant appearance . . .
Later: If pregnant, not yet delivered, is the word from Wheeling. Shea did nothing of note in this context at the Pignatelli mass but is staying in Wheeling for a few days. It’s his annual “visitation” of the Jesuit community there, when he has one-on-one conferences with each, after which he will have the low-down. Icing on the cake, one may assume: how could he in the past have been so sure of the wisdom of what transpired if he didn’t have it?
Indeed, as an astute observer noted to Blithe Spirit, the removal of Giulietti had to be a Jesuit thing, for that matter a provincial’s decision. Civil legality has no room for three Jesuits in a conference call removing a university president. It was the religious superior that did it. Giulietti was remanded back to his own province, New England, case closed. He served in Maryland (province) at sufferance of the Maryland provincial. Sufferance withdrawn, Giulietti withdrew.
So it’s a fool’s errand to ask Shea to save the day, no matter who you are, including Giulietti’s sole trustee-supporter, Rev. Ed Glynn SJ, a former Maryland provincial and successively president of three Jesuit universities. This is as much religious-community politics as university politics.
More today from the mediums in re: High-profile Wheeling Jesuit alum-lobbyist-former-WVa gubernatorial cabinet member Steve Haid’s withdrawing $650,000 in pledged bequests to protest August firing of President Julio Giulietti SJ:
* Charleston State Journal, subheading, “Interim President J. Davitt McAteer said he is not worried about fund raising efforts,” has this from Wheeling Jesuit’s McAteer:
“Haid is one of 10,000 graduates of Wheeling Jesuit University and our fund raising efforts are continuing. . . . Since Aug. 6 [day of the firing], nearly 500 alumni has [sic] made donations. In fact, the number of pledges to the President’s Circle, which had declined over the past two years, have increased over the past three months.”
The President’s Circle includes legacy givers and givers of $1,000 and up in a range of four “societies,” the most generous of which is for givers of $25,000 and up, according to the WJU web site.
* Wheeling News-Register, relying in part on AP, has this:
The Rev. James Shea, provincial of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, stressed that Bransfield played no role in the firing.
This without saying it talked to Shea, which is odd.
* West Virginia public radio gives beaucoups de time and space to the current WJU administration, with barely a nod to its critics:
Officials at Wheeling Jesuit University say they are moving forward in the right direction since the Board of Trustees at the college decided to change leadership in August.
Enrollment and giving are up, says interim President McAteer, citing donations from “nearly 500” alums and a rise in President’s Circle pledges, as above.
Noting “public fallout from friends of Giulietti over how the change in leadership was handled,” the station could not reach Haid but did reach “vice chair of WJU’s Board of Directors, Mimi Helm,” who simply denied Bishop Bransfield’s role in decision-making:
“I have attended every meeting over the last year for the entire meeting every single time. The Bishop has nothing to do with the workings of the board. We had meetings and discussions, we made some decisions, not the Bishop.”
She also described the recently suspended search for a new president attractively:
“We have the people in place so we can take our time and do a really thorough job. The search this time is . . . unique in the history of the school because we are able to look for a Jesuit or non-Jesuit candidate as the number of the Jesuit’s [sic] decline in the United States and it becomes more of our lay people’s mission to carry the Jesuit spirit forward and to do that with the next president.”
More more more as items arise . . .
Other mediums are picking up on the Wheeling Jesuit Alum story, first reported here. PhillyBurbs.com has this nice summary:
Charleston lobbyist Steve Haid says he’s withdrawing a planned gift of $650,000 in money and property to Wheeling Jesuit University, his alma mater.
Haid says he’s upset with the abrupt departure of the school’s former president, the Rev. Julio Giuletti, earlier this year.
Haid served as an unpaid assistant helping to generate donations to the university under Giuletti. Haid believes the Jesuit was forced out in a power struggle involving Bishop Michael Bransfield.
Bryan Minor, a spokesman for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, says the bishop had nothing to do with Giuletti’s [sic] selection or departure from the university.
The university has temporarily halted its search for a new president. For the first time, the university is considering candidates who aren’t Jesuit priests.
That’s based on the Charleston Gazette, which adds this:
“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Haid takes this position on withdrawing his estate gift,” [interim President J. Davitt] McAteer said in a prepared statement. “We have not seen any decline in our fundraising numbers and donations. We are moving forward and working on the business of running a university in a positive manner.
“We regret that Mr. Haid cannot join us.”
The Gazette continues, giving an expanded account of the August firing (its first) and quoting a Giulietti supporter, Charleston attorney Rudolph DiTrapano:
“I was outraged. That’s why I resigned [as a director],” DiTrapano said of the vote. “I thought Giulietti was very gifted. He was a very unusually bright priest.”
DiTrapano also is discontinuing his funding of a Wheeling Jesuit scholarship, the Gazette reports.
Haid is also quoted.
“As the letter indicates, there has been a hostile takeover of the university by factions controlled by the bishop and other elements that I don’t think are supportive of the mission of the university or its rich history or commitment to quality education,” Haid said Wednesday.
Ditto the bishop, through Bryan Minor, a spokesman for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
“Bishop Bransfield has repeatedly indicated that he did not have a role in the selection of Father Julio Giulietti . . . and he has not had a role in [his] departure . . . ” Minor said Wednesday.
The university “does not fall under the umbrella of the Diocese . . . We do share a common ministry to the young men and women of West Virginia, and the diocese and the university do continue to collaborate because Wheeling Jesuit is the only Catholic institution of higher education in West Virginia,” Minor said.
The Gazette notes that an Aug. 6 press release gave no reason for Giulietti’s removal, but said he was leaving to “continue pursuit of his ministry,” with focus on spirituality, faith, personal development and international outreach.
Haid called that no more than “an attempt to sugarcoat a bitter pill.”
As for the recent suspending of the search for a new president, Haid:
“The truth of the matter is nobody wants to go there,” he said. “They had a great president and they ran him out of town and consequently they can’t find anyone worthy of the job.”
Not so, replied the university:
“University presidents come from a highly competitive field of professionals and it’s not unusual for a search to take longer than planned and to twist and turn along the way. It has absolutely nothing to do with the August departure of our previous president,” Margaret “Mimie” Helm, chairwoman of the Presidential Search Committee and vice chairwoman of the board of directors, said in a prepared statement.
“This is also the first time that the position is open to lay persons and not just Jesuit priests, which also changes the search from our past experience.”
Meanwhile, apart from the Gazette story (its first extended treatment of the Giulietti firing), the Jesuit provincial (Maryland province) with responsibility for Wheeling Jesuit is due on campus Nov. 16 to celebrate the noon Liturgy with fellow Jesuits in honor of the feast of St. Joseph Pignatelli, the university’s patron saint.
A graduate who is close to the scene comments to Blithe Spirit:
He’s not crossing the Alleghenies to do a liturgy. He’s going to announce something. I don’t know what, but it will be interesting.
Finally, Joseph Pignatelli, S.J., who, having entered the Jesuits in 1753, was on hand for their suppression in 1773 and is credited with regaining papal accreditation in 1814, though he died three years before that. He was canonized in 1954, the year Wheeling Jesuit (then Wheeling College) was founded.
It’s not too late to start a novena to him, is it?
A contributor and volunteer fund-raiser for Wheeling Jesuit University has withdrawn his promised support amounting to $650,000 in cash and property bequests in protest of the firing in August of Rev. Julio Giulietti, SJ, as president.
The firing was “the most cowardly, deceitful and morally perverse action that I have ever witnessed,” said Stephen E. Haid in an Oct. 18 letter to interim President J. Davitt McAteer. Blithe Spirit has obtained a copy of the letter.
Haid, a 1963 graduate of Wheeling Jesuit and longtime teacher at West Virginia University until becoming a teachers union lobbyist and then campaign chairman and later cabinet member in Gov. Gaston Caperton’s administration, blames the firing on three people or groups:
* Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling, who “wanted to slap [Giulietti] down” because Giulietti “sought to acquire the [adjacent] Mount de Chantal property for Wheeling Jesuit.”
* “An element on the Board of Directors . . . who want to micromanage the University, who want any president to be an errand boy.”
* The three Jesuit trustees who “in an irregular night session” voted to fire Giulietti.
Haid was named last March by Giulietti as one of two Special Assistants to the President for Advancement to work on planned giving, endowment development and alumni partnerships, with an office on campus.
It was a continuation of his working “very closely” with Giulietti “for at least a year,” he said in his letter.
Among Haid’s other activities is to serve with Bishop Bransfield on the board of the West Virginia KIDS COUNT Fund, founded in 1989 by Gov. Caperton, who later became president of The College Board.
Haid has also served on the board of governors of Marshall University, in Huntington, WV — at one time as a member of its executive committee.
The RC bishops have cut off two more organizations — ACORN being already tossed under the prelatial bus — from Catholic Campaign for Human Development funding.
One of them is
the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), which has been funded for the last four years, and was set to receive $30,000 this year. The CPA’s 2008 voters guide (on the BVM website here and here) urged Californians to vote against enshrining the true definition of marriage in the state’s constitution (proposition Eight) and requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions (proposition 4)
The other:
the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN) . . . which has been funded for the last five years and was to receive $40,000 this year. LACAN has promoted same-sex ‘marriage’ and actively supports contraception and the morning-after pill through a clinic at the Downtown Women’s Center.
They were both fingered by the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry, “a Catholic grass-roots organizing ministry dedicated to truth and action,” which also says this about itself:
Unlike community organizing groups which bring men together to create faceless political power and revolution, we recognize the inherent dignity of each person created by God . . . . We do not strive to create power . . . . Instead, we seek to instill the fearless hope that comes from walking in light and truth.
CCHD director Ralph McCloud announced himself “shocked” at being informed of the un-Catholic proclivities of the two now-defunded organizations. But it’s a claim that Churchmouse Campanologist (“Ringing the bells for Christian traditions and getting our story out there. If we don’t, who will?”) found hard to swallow:
(A) 26-page list on the USCCB website . . . [has] all the hallmarks of organisations no true Catholic would wish to donate to.
It includes multiple references to:
‘Industrial Areas Foundation’ [Alinsky legacy from its beginnings], ‘PICO’ [People Improving Communities through Organizing, mostly by churches], ‘community organisation’? It must follow, therefore, that these groups espouse a leftist philosophy and will support leftist programmes, whether sexual, social or political.
Sounds right to me. RC bishops have been captured?
Blithe Spirit 
