U.S. Catholic Church

Featured Sisters Lea and Consilia

Will Benedict bind the Catholic vote to Anti-abortionism forever?


Even though polls indicate approximately half of U.S. Catholics follow Pope Benedict XVI’s magisterial decrees on how Catholics should evaluate voting issues, that half is a rather large bargaining chip for the present church-state alliance in which Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan engages a certain political party.

Although the Catholic vote is now almost evenly divided between opposing political parties, half of the 51 million adult Catholic population distributed nationwide still represent a large bargaining chip for the present U.S. Catholic Church. A much-needed bargaining chip, indeed, as the U.S. Catholic bishops struggle to avoid large-scale legal prosecution for past clerical abuses in pending court cases nationwide.

While striving to avoid parish and diocesan bankruptcy, the U.S. bishops are also making every effort to save the Church’s approximately 6,000 Catholic schools serving close to 2 million U.S. students (20% of whom are not Catholic).

The present situation of the U.S. Church-state alliance with the GOP, though embarrassing for some bishops, claims justification in the magisterial teachings of Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and even early Church Fathers as cited and propagated by Eternal Word Television Network, EWTN Global Catholic Network.
https: //www.ewtn.com/vote/download/moralguide.pdf

Meanwhile, the GOP is determined to pack the court and do whatever it takes to over-turn Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision that protected a woman’s right to privacy under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Imagine what other rights to privacy can be overturned if this one passes Supreme Court muster! Genetic testing? Doctor-patient confidentiality? Business trade secrets? Lawyer-client privilege? Financial confidentiality?

Sisters Lea and Consilia

Is Church criminal activity the result of failed theology?

Seems that Church criminal activity IS the result of failed theology…according to Robert Mickens quoting Church historian, Massimo Faggioli, in Mickens’ recent article “Why Catholic Church leaders risk failing on the issue of sexual abuse”

Scrolling down Mickens’ article to the subheading The ongoing implosion of the Church, we find these words:

“As Massimo Faggioli suggested in a recent article published by La Croix International.” says Mickens,

It is not simply a question of dealing with a criminal phenomenon. It is also a theological question: from the theology of the sacraments (especially ordination to the priesthood) to ecclesiological models; from the role of women in the Church to last century’s magisterium on sexual morality. (Bold emphasis ours)

 

“The most complicated issue concerns the structural reforms required to address the mystique surrounding the priesthood and the episcopate, which are often still seen as positions of honor without the responsibilities that derive from holy orders.
(Indented text and absence of most quote marks in above two paragraphs are as in original Mickens’ article.)

At Rite Beyond Rome, we believe that Church criminal activity IS the result of failed theology.

If Vatican II had been taken seriously by the Church preceding Francis, it would not have been dismissed as simply a pastoral council. 

If Vatican II had been taken seriously back in the 1970’s, 80’s, 90’s up to the present day, collegial community would have been the hallmark of a modern theology transvalued in light of the very core of the Gospels and Church Tradition of Collegial Community…and not simply in light of episcopal collegiality which was also suppressed.

Want more on how the Church would look as a Collegial Community?

Also see:  Beyond Damage Control and Church Structural Reform: Theology Supports Sex/Power Abuse?