open book

Is Paris Turning?

A report:

One can see this in all sorts of small ways, even in a city like Paris—the ville natale of secular Enlightenment and a cultural epicenter for so many of its progeny. Last fall, I lived in Paris after some eight years away, and I was surprised and heartened by what I saw.

The homilies in various Catholic churches I attended were rigorous and unabashedly theological (here, if not always in politics, the longstanding French taste for speculative thinking is a blessing). Several Catholic parishes in the center of Paris are able to attract about 25 to 30 people for each of their respective lunchtime and evening Masses, and hundreds of people for Sunday Mass. Religious instruction is much better publicized and offered more widely to diverse ages and educational levels than it was when I last lived in the city in the mid to late 1990s.

The Catholic radio station, Radio Notre Dame ( www.radionotredame.com) broadcasts music, religious conversation, and theological debate from the center of Paris 24 hours a day, now mixing its format more broadly to appeal to different age groups and aesthetic sensibilities. It has created a broader network that offers Christian content for religious radio stations throughout France and the francophone world.

Oremus

Every month, the Holy Father has prayer intentions.

April's prayer intention?

The Vatican has announced that during the month of April, Pope Benedict XVI will focus his prayer specifically on the plight of the much-persecuted Church in China.

The text of the Holy Father’s April mission intention, released today, is "That the Church in China may carry out its evangelizing mission serenely and in full freedom."

Da Vinci Facts

Do go check out this excellent blog-style resource and links page on DVC. Bookmark, it too!

Crunchy Cons!

Pete Vere's got a piece on Catholic Exchange:

Dreher chronicles how many families are living out their crunchy con convictions. From homeschooling to organic and family farming, from turning off the television to turning on the oven and enjoying a good home-cooked meal, crunchy cons are doing little things to restore a more natural pace within the family. For at its essence the crunchy con philosophy is about living in harmony with the natural world as wise stewards entrusted by God with the care of His creation.

This last point has escaped Dreher’s critics in my opinion. Their most common complaint is that Dreher never gets around to presenting a plan for moving the crunchy con ideology forward. He does not have to present some grand plan; rather it is the little things that move crunchy conservatism forward. As Dreher repeatedly points out in his book, big things happen when enough people look after the little things.

Boston Schism?

Dom's got a hint.

In short, the schismatic Rochester Spiritus Christi community is noting the beginnings of an offshoot in Ontario, and claims, in a bulletin notice that some "Boston priests" are continuing with their plans....

Read more.

Lending a hand

Emily from the After Abortion blog is down on the Gulf Coast, doing some Katrina recovery volunteer work. Go read her description of life down that way these days.

Where'd the love go?

Up to this point, the UK Tablet has been okay with Benedict. Today, in the most recent issue, they reprint an excerpt from a forthcoming bio of JPII.

The tone for the meeting was set by the publication of a book entitled The Ratzinger Report, a long interview which John Paul’s man at the CDF had given to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori. The cardinal tactfully spoke of “restoration” rather than counter-revolution, but there seemed little doubt about what he had in mind. “If by ‘restoration’ we understand the search for a new balance after all the exaggerations of an indiscriminate opening to the world, after the overly positive interpretations of an agnostic and atheistic world,” he told Vittorio Messori, “then a restoration understood in this sense (a newly found balance of orientation and values within the Catholic totality) is altogether desirable and, for that matter, is already in operation in the Church.”

The pope says grazie

...for the Lenten retreat preached to the Curia:

Together with the ecclesiastical and ecclesial nature of these exercises, you have also shown us their Christological dimension. You have made us attentive to the inner Teacher; you have helped us to listen to the Teacher who speaks with us and within us; you have helped us to respond to and speak with the Lord, listening to his words. You have led us on this "catechumenal" journey which is the Gospel according to Mark, on a common pilgrimage together with the disciples bound for Jerusalem.

You have also restored to us the certainty that in our Bark, despite all the storms of history, is Christ. You have taught us to see anew on the suffering face of Christ, on the face crowned with thorns, the glory of the Risen One.

Word Up

John Allen

He muses on the past year, and really says something important here, and says it almost perfectly:

Benedict is a supple thinker, and unpacking his approach on any given question requires nuance. Because his points of departure are the 2,000-year tradition of the church, coupled with his own judgments about the character of people under consideration, rather than the ideological categories of secular politics, his decisions will sometimes strike the outside world as surprising and out of character.

His organizational scheme:

What Hasn't Happened

First, anyone who expected Benedict XVI to ride into town and turn the Catholic church on its ear had an overheated imagination. Benedict is profoundly conscious of himself as the carrier of a 2,000 year old tradition and as the universal pastor of a very large and complex global community, not as a president or prime minister elected to pursue a personal agenda.

Who's Paying Attention?

Papal aficionados, those who hang on every utterance, are by and large tremendously impressed with Benedict XVI, regardless of whether they come from the left, right or center. Benedict is an extraordinarily erudite figure, easily the most intellectually profound world leader on the stage today. He is a gifted writer, and his texts to date have been well received, both at the level of content and of tradecraft. He is also a surprisingly adept public figure, projecting an air of warmth and gentleness that people tend to find charming.

He is, in short, a pope of whom Catholics seem to feel proud.

The Dictatorship of Relativism

To put Benedict's point in street language, it boils down to this: You may not like what we have to say, but at least give us credit for our motives. We're not talking about truth because we want to chain you down, but because we want to set you free. It's not a matter of love and joy versus a fussy, legalistic church. It's a question of two different visions of what real love is all about -- Baywatch, so to speak, versus the gospel. We too want happy, healthy, liberated people, we just have a different idea of how to get there.

Tough Love

In his March 23 session with cardinals, much conversation turned on Islam, and there was general agreement with Benedict's policy of a more muscular challenge on what Catholics call "reciprocity." In essence, it means that if Muslim immigrants can claim the benefit of religious liberty in the West, then Christian minorities ought to get the same treatment in majority Muslim nations.

Benedict the Teacher

Benedict, on the other hand, is shaping up as a great teacher. It has struck many observers in Rome that he is still drawing larger-than-usual crowds for his Wednesday General Audience and for the Sunday Angelus address. Speaking afterwards with the people who show up, it's striking how often they give some version of the following reaction: "I can understand him." Benedict has a remarkable capacity to express complex theological ideas with clarity and simplicity

I think this is quite on the mark, and Allen notes as well that the most consistent rumblings of discontent, after the whole Reese thing, have come from the "conservative" end - from the mild questions of when things are going to get reigned in, to the accusations of total sell-out on the part of some that greeted the Instruction on Homosexuals in the Seminary.

The audit

Several reports:

The Washington Times:

Sex-abuse accusations against the nation's priests were down last year, but the flood of millions of dollars in payouts more than tripled and shows no signs of stopping, the United States' Roman Catholic bishops said yesterday.
    "It is disheartening to us bishops, as it must be to all Catholics, to find that there are still some allegations of abuse by clerics against today's children and young people," Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), said during the release of the conference's annual report on sex-abuse statistics.

I found this a startling statement, and while I'm noexpert, hard to believe:

A supplemental report, issued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said there were no warning signs for the typical abuser, who is a priest in his late 30s who has been ordained 11 years. Diocesan priests tended to be abusers twice as much as priests from religious orders.
    "The red flags aren't there," said Karen Terry, the report's principal investigator. Except for a small group of serial abusers who began abusing children around the time of their ordinations, "there are no identifiable psychological problems."

No, we're not talking about greasy men in trenchcoats, but I'm having a hard time believing that a sexually abusive cleric has "no identifiable psychologcial problems." I cannot even figure out what that means.

Zenit, with a summary:

-- 532 clergy (463 diocesan and 69 religious institute) were accused. About 82% of these clergy were already out of ministry: 418 (including 374 diocesan clergy) are deceased, already removed from ministry, already dismissed from the clerical state, or without a known address; and another 20 (including 18 diocesan clergy) were permanently removed from ministry in 2005.

-- 57 (including 44 diocesan clergy) were temporarily removed from ministry in 2005. Twelve (all diocesan) were returned to ministry in 2005. Fourteen (including 13 diocesan clergy) identified in 2005 were still in active ministry pending investigation of an allegation. Fourteen diocesan and three religious institute clergy with an allegation prior to 2005 were also described as still active pending investigation.

Of the 532 clergy accused in 2005, over 61% had already been identified in prior allegations.

The Washington Post:

Karen Terry, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the vast majority of the abuse took place from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. There has been a sharp decline in the number of cases since the early 1990s, which an analysis indicates is not just a matter of a lag in reporting, she said.

"We know that sexual abuse is underreported and that more people will come forward," she said. "But the decrease in sexual abuse cases is real." She added that the decline mirrors the general societal decrease in crime, substance abuse and sex abuse in the 1990s.

Teresa M. Kettelkamp, a former Illinois state police officer who heads the bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection, said "it is important to acknowledge how much has been done" to remove abusers from the priesthood, including 57 priests who were suspended in 2005.

She said U.S. dioceses have conducted background checks on 1.6 million adults who work with minors and have provided "safe environment" training to 5.7 million children, 95 percent of all those entrusted to the care of the church.

22 dioceses are not "in compliance," most of them, as this article states because they've not instituted "safe environment" programs - controversial, as we well know.

Like most other dioceses in that category — cited in the bishops' third annual report on sex-abuse prevention policies — the Twin Cities archdiocese has lagged in offering "safe-environment training" to all children in its schools and parish programs.

Archdiocese officials say their noncompliance was no surprise because they have tried to methodically introduce programs that nonetheless have brought about a firestorm of opposition from some local Catholics.

The archdiocese — which has conducted abuse-prevention training for its priests, deacons and staff and continues offering it to volunteers — plans to implement the training in its schools and parish education programs beginning this fall.

Since last year, however, some local Catholic groups have deluged the archdiocese with complaints about the proposed programs, particularly those intended for pupils in kindergarten through fourth grade.

Both the audit and the John Jay Report are linked on the bishop's website here.