Catholic Church: Mass Attendance Down, $77 Million Settlement, German Teologians in Revolt

I often lament that far too many Catholics refuse to pull their heads out of the sand and admit to themselves that (1) they belong to a Church where the top leadership is nothing less than a total moral cesspool and (2) by continuing church attendance and financial support they are accessories to the crimes of the hierarchy. Underscoring this rot and stench in the Church hierarchy is a new $77 million sex abuse settlement involving the Delaware Catholic Diocese of Wilmington that involved 150 victims of sexual abuse by priests. The good news, however, is that some Catholics seem to be finally waking up. In Boston, mass attendance has plummeted (less than 20% of Catholics attend weekly mass) prompting parishes closing and in German one third of the theologians at Catholic universities have demanded broad Church reforms including an end to celibacy, women priests and gay couples. Such reforms would be the truly Christian thing to do, which means the Vatican will oppose them tooth and claw. First, here are highlights from the Washington Post on the settlement in Wilmington:
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Lawyers involved with the Delaware Catholic Diocese of Wilmington's $77 million settlement with nearly 150 alleged victims of sexual abuse said the church's agreement to release unredacted documents is a historic step toward making sure it doesn't happen again. And lawyers for the alleged victims said they will post the documents on the Internet. "When people see the documents, they will be able to judge for themselves" how the church dealt with pedophile priests, attorney John Manly said.
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The diocese agreed Wednesday to settle the lawsuits, which claimed child sexual abuse by dozens of diocesan and religious order priests dating to the early 1960s. Attorney Thomas Neuberger, who represented 99 of the 146 alleged victims, said they would each receive $530,000 on average.
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Meanwhile, the Boston Archdiocese is seeing mass attendance fall drastically and is looking at parishes to close due to lack of operating funds - even though the Church ironically has millions of dollars to invest in anti-gay political activities. It's strange to me that the priorities of the Vatican are such that they will throw parishioners out of their churches, yet has money to burn when it comes to fueling homophobia and interfering with the civil laws. Here are highlights from the Catholic News Agency on the plight of many parishes in the Boston area:
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[A]rchdiocesan spokesman Terry Donilon told CNA. “Today less than 20% attend weekly Mass in the Archdiocese.” These numbers call for what Donilon described as a “total rebuild of the archdiocese,” likely to include mergers between several parish communities
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Statistics from the archdiocese indicate that 40 percent of its parishes are barely meeting their financial needs or operating at a loss, while the number of active diocesan priests is expected to diminish by nearly half – from around 400, to only 180 – by 2021. Mass attendance in Boston dropped by 23 percent between 2000 and 2009.
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Obviously, covering up the rape of children has not been good for business in the Boston Archdioceses. Neither is the Vatican's refusal to move away from a 13th century view of the world and human sexuality. Some 140 plus Catholic theologians in German are demanding that things change. While their valiant effort is probably a case of spitting into the wind currently, unless the Catholic Church wants to ultimately become an African based church where uneducated populations remain plentiful, change will have to come at some point. Here are highlights from the Canadian Press:
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University theologians in Germany have called on the Catholic Church to abandon the vow of celibacy for priests, open up the clergy for women and accept gays couples. The 143 professors said the church must implement bold reforms because of "a crisis without precedent" following the discovery of widespread sexual and physical abuses by clergymen a year ago.
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More Christians than ever have turned their backs on the Catholic Church in the past year, they said. "The Church has to understand these signs and move beyond its ossified structures to regain new vitality and credibility." The appeal, published in newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung's Friday edition, called on the church's leadership to stop excluding gay couples and remarried Christians. "The Church also needs married priests and women holding positions in the clergy," the appeal said — in clear defiance of the Vatican's dogmas.
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[T]he wealthy Catholic Church in the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI sees the number of its followers dwindling, leading to lower proceeds every year, and ever fewer young men choosing to become priests.
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The professors also called for a more democratic and less centralized church, including giving the faithful a say in appointing their priests and bishops. "What can be decided locally, should be decided there," the appeal said.

The Vatican Simply Just Doesn't Get It

Over the weekend I looked at the Vatican's incredible insensitive - can we say down right stupid - move in equating the sexual abuse of children by priests as equally heinous with the ordination of women as priests. Maureen Dowd, with her typical verbal flare, took on this idiocy in a New York Times op-ed column yesterday. Until such time as the Roman Catholic Church gets over its Medieval views of sex and the inferiority of women, I suspect that more and more Catholics will listen less and less to the Church's hypocritical and sexually obsessed moral lectures. Add that to the still ongoing disclosures of sexual abuse and high clergy cover ups of it and it all equates to waning Church influence in the developed and educated parts of the world. Indeed, Catholicism is headed for a third world religion status. Here are some highlights from Dowd's column:
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If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn’t really do that.
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The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it’s making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it’s taking baby steps.
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The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened. There is no moral awakening here.
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In a remarkable Times story recently, Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger debunked the spin that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been one of the more alert officials on the issue of sexual abuse: “The future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction.
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In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus.
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I cannot begin to understand the warped thinking of the Church hierarchy - and I am glad that I can't comprehend it since it is utterly sick.

Catholic Church Equates Priestly Sexual Abuse of Children With Female Ordination

OMG! Sometimes I have to wonder what alternate universe the bitter old queens in Roman Catholic Church hierarchy dwell in. In its latest WTF move, the Vatican has formulated new rules that state that priests who rape little boys and ruin their lives are in the same criminal category (under church law) as are Catholic bishops who ordain women as priests and are the women who participate in ordination ceremonies. Yep, that's right: ordaining women is as bad as raping children. I always knew that the Church was seriously f*cked up when it came to all matters sexual and the hierarchy's abiding hatred of women (for a phenomenal analysis of this check out Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, which I read some years back), but this takes the insanity up a notch even for these folks. The old good news is that this insane move will likely undermine what little moral authority the Church retains and we will see more and more countries like Portugal and Argentina that utterly ignored the Church's protestations and demagoguery on the issue of gay rights and gay marriage. U.S. News & Report has a column that looks at this latest mind numbing insanity. Here are some highlights:
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I had to reread the first paragraph of the following story three times until I was sure I’d read it correctly. The Vatican believes that priests who rape little boys and ruin their lives are in the same criminal category (under church law) as are Catholic bishops who ordain women as priests and are the women who participate in ordination ceremonies. According to the Guardian:

The Vatican today made the "attempted ordination" of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism. The new rules, which have been sent to bishops around the world, apply equally to Catholic women who agree to a ceremony of ordination and to the bishop who conducts it. Both would be excommunicated. Since the Vatican does not accept that women can become priests, it does not recognize the outcome of any such ceremony.
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The penalty is the ultimate one issued by the church: excommunication. Of course excommunication can be appealed but it is rarely so. It comes at a time when the Anglican Church is moving closer to the ordination of female bishops.
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Oddly enough the revision which brought about an equalization of the penalties for female ordination and pederasty came while the Vatican was trying to toughen penalties for priests accused of sexually abusing young Catholics.
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Bob Felton tries to make some sense out of this lunacy over at Civil Commotion, but I'm sorry it is just plain f*cked up:
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Ordaining a woman to serve as a priest, like supporting gay marriage, arises, on the church’s terms, from something in the neighborhood of heresy. It is an error of belief, on a matter that the church considers settled. But child sexual abuse — again, on their terms — is an instance of human weakness.

This is a vital distinction. On the Vatican’s terms, making child sexual abuse akin to ordaining a woman priest elevates the gravity of the offense, raises it from the terrain of understandable human weakness to something near to heresy.

However clumsily and stupidly they’ve handled it, however repellent the misogyny, it is a step — again, from the Vatican’s perspective — in the right direction.
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Once again, why does anyone listen to these hateful nut cases? They are in need of serious mental health care intervention if they equate the ordination with raping children and youths.

Court Hearing Postponed for Former Catholic Priest

I know it's a shocking concept, but amazingly a Catholic priest from up near the Charlottesville area of Virginia is up on criminal charges that do NOT involve molesting minors. Yes, it's a startling circumstance. Rather, the former pastor - who has already been convicted for funneling funds from two parishes - is up on 13 new charges of embezzlement. Not to sound prejudiced, but it is also telling that the priest in question had been imported from the Philippines due to the severe shortage of priests in the Diocese of Richmond and elsewhere in the USA. God forbid that the Nazi Pope allow honest, competent and sincere married, gay or women priests. Oops - this guy was unbeknown to the Diocese, married too. Here are highights from the Richmond Times Dispatch:

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A former Catholic priest convicted in federal court of defrauding two local churches of hundreds of thousands of dollars was due back in court today on 13 more charges. . . . Rodney L. Rodis, 51, was sentenced in February to five years in federal prison for diverting for personal use money donated to the two county parishes he headed. Rodis was sentenced for mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering -- not for stealing.

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Rodis was sentenced for mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering -- not for stealing. The state charges accuse Rodis of stealing money from Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Bumpass and St. Jude Catholic Church in Mineral while he was pastor. The counts cover thefts from 1995 to 2006. He could face a prison term of up to 260 years if convicted on all charges.

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Authorities later found out that Rodis was married two years before coming to the U.S. from the Philippines, his native country. He was living a double life with his wife and children in Spotsylvania County while pastor of the two churches. Rodis apparently wired the stolen money to the Philippines, where his family purchased property, according to evidence in his federal case. Rodis, who is in federal custody, has been barred from priestly duties and has had his pension cut off. Proceedings to formally defrock him have begun.