RC officialdom’s tilt to the left is a matter of long-standing precedent, let the (sad) record show.  Catholic periodicals responding to Depression  problems

were generally sympathetic to the social-welfare legislation of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. John A. Ryan, Raymond McGowan, and William Montavon were frequently supportive, and Bishop William O’Brien went so far as to declare that “when the greatest depression in our history threatened our country and seemed about to submerge it, Almighty God raised up Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the apostle of the New
Deal.”

Only the then-dormant or even non-existent abortion issue prevents our current bishops from likewise bloviating, one fears.

Thus Thomas E. Blantz in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), p. 516, reviewing The Response in American Catholic Periodicals to the Crises of the Great Depression, 1930-1935, by Lawrence B. DeSaulniers.

With bishops like O’Brien — a Chicago auxiliary, wouldn’t you know it, and later an archbishop and director of the Chicago-based Catholic Church (home-mission) Extension Society — who needed Steve Early?

Time, I say, to distinguish between the U.S. Catholic Conference, not to mention “the church,” as this AFP story does not:

WASHINGTON — The US Catholic church on Tuesday condemned Arizona’s “draconian” new immigration law, saying it would alienate immigrant communities across the United States.

“This new law, although limited to the State of Arizona, could have impact throughout the nation in terms of how members of our immigrant communities are both perceived and treated,” Bishop John Wester said in a statement issued on behalf of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Time was when “the church” was the pope and the bishops, neither of which has pontificated on the Arizona law, to use a familiar verb.  Then time was or is when it is the people of God — not sure: we used to talk that way a lot when Vatican 2 was news.

In neither case did we mean the DC bureaucracy run by staffers and a bishop director and a bishops’ committee.  AFP probably doesn’t know any better and/or doesn’t give a care about such inside-baseball information.  But who among the bishops is trying to educated it?  (That’s Agence France Presse, by the way.)

=========

Later, from a faithful reader:

Jim — I’m not the only Catholic among my friends who is about to “leave the USCCB” but stay in the church. The USCCB does NOT speak for me — in fact it speaks what I consider the language of the enemies of freedom of religion in this country.  I am tired of being treated like a dumb, lowly tax payer by TWO national entities.  I’m glad you are taking up this issue.

Wow.  Skinback by priest-publisher of a national Catholic newspaper, naming two writers, the late Gerry Renner and Jason Berry, for defending the disgraced founder of his religious community:

Fr. Owen Kearns, L.C., the publisher of the National Catholic Register, has published an apology for defending the disgraced Legionaries of Christ founder Fr. Marcel Maciel. He specifically apologized to victims of Maciel’s abuse, investigative journalists who helped expose the crimes and to readers of the Register.

The two, who collaborated on the book that has Maciel down as cold as reporting can make it:

He expressed regret that he “took to task” journalists Gerald Renner and Jason Berry and their Hartford Courant editors.

“They didn’t get everything about the Legion right but they were fundamentally correct about Father Maciel’s sexual abuse and I ask forgiveness — too late for Gerald Renner, who is deceased.”

The book is Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II.  It’s become a movie, with footage of then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now pope) visibly irritated at being stopped and asked about Maciel — as told in the book, of course.

Requiem for a Catholic academy, with worry about its neighboring Catholic university:

The Wheeling College campus was carved out of the Mount de Chantal estate back in the 1950s. If Wheeling Jesuit [University] and/or the Diocese [of Wheeling] had the funds, they could purchase this beautiful property, continue its use for educational purposes, and guarantee expansion space for WJU indefinitely into the future.

Alas, it is not to be. Mount de Chantal stands on 36 acres, a proud and picturesque 140-year-old school building now crumbling into brick dust, and a small, peaceful cemetery where generations of devoted Visitation nuns lay at final rest, mission accomplished.

The Mount could not survive into a new century when there are no religious vocations, so few girls from well-to-do Wheeling families seeking an exclusive education, the Linsly school [in Wheeling] poaching the few prospects who remain, and the economy of the Ohio Valley sinking slowly into ruin.

Farewell, Mount de Chantal, and let us pray that your neighbor, Wheeling Jesuit, is not destined for the same fate!

It’s an eloquent anonymous comment at Save! Wheeling Jesuit University, which since last August has been mourning and protesting the ouster of Rev. Julio Giulietti SJ as president, blamed by some as the work ultimately of the bishop of Wheeling, who wanted to buy the Mount de Chantal property but allegedly felt thwarted in that by Giulietti.

The comment was in response to news finally verified that Wheeling (Catholic) Hospital, a diocesan institution, was buying the property and planning to tear down the building which housed the already closed academy.

Fr. Giulietti gone, the diocese (the bishop) gets the property, which to many is not a coincidence.

Herbie Ryan died.

Funeral Mass will be celebrated April 17 at 10 a.m. in Sacred Heart Chapel at Loyola Marymount University for Jesuit Father Herbert J. Ryan who died April 8 from complications of lung cancer at age 79.

. . . .

A member of the Jesuit order for 61 years, he was born in New York in 1931 and ordained by Cardinal Francis Spellman in 1962. Noted throughout his priestly career for his incredible memory and astonishing gift in languages, Father Ryan held graduate degrees from Loyola University in Chicago, in theology from Woodstock College and a Doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome.

We were in philosophy together at West Baden (Ind.) College in the mid-50s, he a transplanted New Yorker among us Midwesterners.  Quite a bright fellow (even then!), he typified the Manhattanites who tended to give the impression that they knew more than the rest of us.

So what?  We Oak Parkers, South Siders, Cincinnatians, etc. rubbed shoulders and minds with people from all over the country and world, in southern Indiana.  Just by joining the Jesuits.  We educated each other.

How much of this by the ferocious wielder of the language and knife-sharp penetrator of fog and misinformation Ann Coulter do I have to read before I decide to read further?

Despite the growing media consensus that Catholicism causes sodomy, an alternative view — adopted by the Boy Scouts — is that sodomites cause sodomy. (Assume all the usual disclaimers here about most gay men not molesting boys, most Muslims being peaceful, and so on.)

This much should do it, even though I am hell-bent on doing other things right now.  Follow her lede here.  Hint: it’s about celibacy as promoting sex abuse.

However, and begin with the column’s very bad, i.e. misleading Town-Hall-dot-com title,

Should gay priests adopt?

 

 

The Catholic archdiocese’s Wheeling Hospital is to acquire the Mount de Chantal property which was mentioned as property Bishop Michael Bransfield wanted but found Wheeling Jesuit University president Rev. Julio Giulietti, SJ, in his way?

Rumor has it that the Mount property is now owned or has been optioned by Wheeling Hospital; the hospital also has announced that it was adding a $50 million wing [wrote Timothy F. Cogan in a letter to the Wheeling Intelligencer/News-Register].

“First and foremost” among reasons alleged by WJU alum and former fund-raiser Steve Haid in his letter of protest over Giulietti’s peremptory firing after two years in office, “Father Julio’s lynching was the handiwork of Bishop Michael Bransfield, who wanted to slap down a Jesuit priest who sought to acquire the Mount de Chantal property for Wheeling Jesuit.”

Cogan wrote to object to a $50–million planned addition [not] to the “beautiful old” Mount de Chantal building which stands next to the WJU campus, for historic-preservation and other reasons. [Rather, to the hospital, per comment below]

The bishop

repeatedly denied involvement in Giulietti’s firing, but did confirm to [National Catholic Reporter] that he wanted the sale of the Mount de Chantal property stopped. The sale never went through.

“I was not in favor of the sale of property to Wheeling Jesuit because the price they offered the sisters was half of the price offered by competing bidders,” Bransfield wrote in a message to NCR.

But the bishop was not involved in the Giulietti firing, said then-acting WJU President Davitt McAteer: “We’re seeing the effects of the anonymous Web and the efforts of a small clique who are unhappy. It’s the guy in the theater yelling fire.”

The search for a Giulietti replacement has stalled.  Sister Francis Marie Thrailkill has hired on as interim president for an estimated 18 months.