Nuns Complain bitterly about Vatican Investigation

Liberal nuns make their thoughts known about the Vatican investigation. Some say that the Vatican is using it to cover up sex-abuse, another one is saying that surgery was banned by the Church.

Vatican investigation into compliance of U.S. Sisters to Catholic doctrine should not impact members of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Agnes.

"And hopefully, it will not impact our university," said Sister Mary Mollison, acting president at Marian University.

She addressed Catholic religious women gathered Thursday at the Stayer Center about tension and rising polarization in the church.

Issues reportedly being investigated include the acceptance of gays and lesbians, the Catholic path as an exclusive path to redemption, and the return of habits. Vatican concerns have also focused on the declining numbers of religious vocations in Western cultures.

"Our freedom is part of the tension going on," Mollison confirmed.

Cardinal Franc Rode' said he requested the three-year study in response to concerns expressed by American Catholics — religious, laity, clergy and hierarchy — about the welfare of religious women and consecrated life in general, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Rhode heads the Vatican office overseeing religious orders.

Assessment of "women religious," as they are referred to in the Catholic Church, could include whether or not those speaking for an order support the idea of women priests, or gay marriage, or whether they believe there can be salvation outside the Catholic church, Mollison said.

Read further...

Scotish Gay Rights Activists Sentenced for Pederasty

EDINBURGH, Scotland, November 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An influential gay rights activist and youth group leader, and another homosexualist activist, have been jailed for life for their involvement in the largest pedophile ring ever uncovered in Scotland.

James Rennie, one time co-coordinator of the homosexual rights group LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Youth Scotland and a former teacher, and Neil Strachan, the former secretary of a Celtic boys club and campaigner on homosexual issues, were convicted in May on charges including sex attacks on children, conspiring to abuse children, and possessing and distributing child pornography.

Rennie and Strachan were the ringleaders of the pedophile network which was uncovered in 2007 after an intensive police investigation, codenamed Operation Algebra.

The investigation led to the arrest of six other men besides Rennie and Strachan, and to the seizure of over 125,000 images and videos of child abuse.

Rennie, 38, was convicted of 14 offenses, including molesting a young boy who was left occasionally under his care by friends over a period of more than four years, beginning when the child was three months old. Rennie was sentenced to life with a minimum of 13 years behind bars.

Read further...

FBI investigates Nun's Halloween Murder on Navajo Nation

By Debra Mayeux The Daily Times
Posted: 11/03/2009 12:00:00 AM MST


NAVAJO — Authorities believe a Roman Catholic nun was murdered on Halloween in her home at St. Bernard Convent in Navajo.
Sister Marguerite Bartz, 64, failed to show up for church Sunday morning, so a colleague went to look for her and found her body.

"Everyone is in shock in that area," said Lee Lamb, spokesman for the Diocese of Gallup, which encompasses the entire Navajo Nation.

Navajo is located on the New Mexico-Arizona state line northwest of Gallup and inside the Navajo Reservation, where federal authorities investigate crimes such as murder.

Bartz was a 40-year member of the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She served since 1999 in Navajo, and prior to that at the Guadalupe Indian Mission in Peña Blanca, Saint Joseph in Laguna and Saint Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe.

"She was always passionate for justice and peace," Lamb said. Lamb learned of Bartz from her superior, Patricia Suchalski, president of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, based in Bensalem, Pa.

Read more...




http://www.daily-times.com/ci_13699845

The Queen is as Popular as Ever in Canada despite Media Distortions

Significant increase in popularity for the Queen in Canada in New Zealand at BBC which they say is even up from 2001, but this Wikipedia poll says 78% favor the Monarchy.

But there are others, pre-emptively predicting the abolition of the Monarchy in Canada, primarily from strange outlets like ths politically dubious report from Yahoo.


The Queen generally stays out of political frays, but it's hard not to imagine that the leftists want to belittle her importance to Canada prior to her visit in 2010 for political advantage, so no doubt, there will be those wanting to "dialogue" about her irrelavence to Canada when it's clear from the massive jiggerng of the polls that the majority of Canadians actually do favor the Monarchy and look forward to welcoming her Majesty next year.

Politicizing Prelates and New York

The last few days have gotten us to thinking about politicising prelates and here we have a case of one who uses his mitre and authority to prop up his leftist political causes. Generally abortion isn't negotiable, most of the time, but sometimes (most of the time) you support the DNC talking points and candidates when your Diocese's schools, hospitals or "charitable" organizations or the semnary where conservative candidates get weeded out, need support.

A bishop’s flexibility
November 1, 2009, 5:11 pm Posted by Paul Moses



As chairman of the bishops’ committee that drafted the statement “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” Brooklyn’s Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio has had an important role in interpreting what it actually means. In the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign, he wrote in a letter to The New York Times that the newspaper had erred in a story on Joseph Biden and the Catholic vote in reporting the statement would “explicitly allow Catholics to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if they do so for other reasons.”

Read more...

Anglican churches in Waltham Forest could move en masse to the Catholic Church after a decree issued by Pope Benedict XVI [The Guardian]

St Margaret's, in Woodhouse Road, Leytonstone, St Michael's, in Palmerston Road, Walthamstow, and St Saviour's, in Markhouse Road, Walthamstow, all look set to take the Pope up on his offer.

But some Anglicans believe the Catholic Church’s opposition to the ordination of women and gay rights will be a stumbling block.

Read More...

Liberal Obfuscation at the Pope's Offer?

We're already aware that this offer of Benedict may be met with a lukewarm reception even among the disaffected Anglicans who don't see how they can possibly reconcile the new positions elucidated in the Covenant and biblical and doctrinal Christianity.

Father Z has warned of a Liberal meltdown in the wake of this announcement. There are already some reports that two disaffected Anglican Bishops are not necessarily coming over.

The following report in the Telegraph takes Bishop of Chichester to task for his unequal statements that he wanted to have in the agreement that his orders were always in effect. Well, in a sense they were, at least as regards Baptism. I'm sure that the Bishop baptised many new Christians, but that's not strictly speaking, always the role of the priest. This should be interesting to watch.

Disaffected Anglican bishops don't know if they're coming or going

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali was at least clear on Saturday. He said: “I have to admit that Arcic and its work has been shot to pieces.” He went on to say that his hopes for unity with Rome had been destroyed

.

In fact, it seems that he is not becoming a Catholic because, despite his continual condemnation of homosexuality, he is at heart, an Anglican.

It's hard to understand what he's holding out for, because if Arcic has been shot to pieces, so has any semblance of continuity, save the most superficial, between historical Christianity and the Anglican Communion.

The Curious Cardinal

As providence would have it, there was an recently published interview in NCR about the aforementioned Cardinal George whose statement on interreligious dialogue with the Jews leaves us in little doubt that he has a very circumscribed notion of the Church's mission to the world, including the Jews.

John Allen's soft-ball interview leaves some questions unanswered, but does admit a blithe admonition to an indeterminate and perhaps fabled duality in the American Church, those elusive Liberals and Conservatives. Incredibly, the Cardinal accuses the mythical polarity of focusing too much on Bishops, assuming that they have more power than they have and an obligation to correct and on the other hand wishing they didn't have too much power. He admonishes both of these legendary antognists to focus more on Christ, but doesn't fail to relinquish responsibillity for the problems he identifies, feebly, like Catechesis, the sorry state of Catholic Charitable institutes, and Liturgy.

Considering the Cardinal's more recent "clarifications" on Interreligious Dialogue with the Jews, he's talking about himself when he describes Liberals. Wishing he had less authority than he does, perhaps, or still worse, wishing that since, "the conservatives wish to descend into sectarianism" that all of these distinctions between the beliefs of various religions are meant to be ignored. Somehow, our focus on Christ and work among with poor with a leftist missionary organisation like St'Egidio will cause us to forget those petty doctrinal problems and the poor showing so many priests make when it comes to the Liturgy. In all of this, he strikes me as a less potent, understated, and therefore perhaps more dangerous version of his sulferous predecessor, Cardinal Berardin.

What this all amounts to, more than a fawning softball interview by a bootlicking journalist, is the Bishop telling the laity that things will continue basically as they have and that they need to keep giving and obeying.

Moreover, by the end of this interview, I was still in the dark about what His Lordship meant by improving Evangelization. I think he's implying that we need to be less Catholic and more Universalist, that we can leave behind this implausible sectarianism as the dusty relic of a bygone age and other such cliché. Perhaps his "plant" is that there is no plan, or at least not one he's going to tell anyone else.