Jeff Miller over at the Curt Jester points his readers to a sad story about a Catholic journalist doing some investigation in a small town in Georgia and ending up being driven from his parish via restraining orders. Now, reading both sides, it’s apparent that one party is not telling the truth. My gut tells me that the journalist — Robert Kumpel — is the truth teller here, and as a humble blogger, I have that right. It’s just a hunch, though. I wouldn’t do justice summarizing, so go and read, and come back. Jeff has all the relevant links in his post.
You’re back? Good. A pretty amazing story. Several things come to mind. First, this is essentially denying of sacraments over a civil disagreement. Isn’t there some appeal that Mr. Kumpel can make with higher ecclesiastical authorities than his local bishop? There has to be some structure in place to check misuse of authority of local bishops. Second, this is certainly indicative of the kind of behavior that a small number of priests from the old generation suffered from. Back then, with a large Catholic family, one boy would be all but forced into the priesthood, resulting in a lot of priests that really were going through the motions. A priest and bishop from the Old Country, both of the pre-Vatican II generation? Bingo. I think I’m warm here. And lastly, if I were him, I’d move out of the diocese. It sounds as though his faith and exercise thereof is a central thing in his life, so it’s either that or wait the bishop out. Even if there is a process that the Church has to resolve these matters, it would probably take years to do so, and would be a long shot.
I will say that it sounds like the only thing that could move this case without involving the Vatican would be either very high powered Catholic lawyers working for free, or a campaign to publicize this and keep the light shining on this parish for a long, long time to come.
A sad story, and brings into relief how human the Church is. Honestly, they’re acting like children, and not as adult Christians.
A quickie post by Mark Steyn on the National Review’s blog The Corner caught my eye this late insomniac evening, in reference to an English middle schooler that may be a father at age 13. A reader had pointed out something pretty telling in the original source material on the Telegraph:
Britain has the highest underage pregnancy rate in western Europe, despite channelling substantial resources into sex education for children as young as five.
One of Steyn’s readers points out: “On this side of the pond we would say “because of” or “due to;” perhaps you could explain this alternate British meaning of “despite” to your American readers?” Yeah, bingo. Now, to me (as well as the reader and, presumably, Mark Steyn) this is common sense. Starting sex education for preschoolers is a problem in this situation, and not the solution. What I think is interesting is that this is an opinion blog. The Telegraph is straight news, and yet to that staff journalist, it’s common sense that sex education for preschoolers would obviously lower teen pregnancies. Obviously.
I was sad to see that Father Richard Neuhaus passed away this morning. I’ve read a lot of his writings on First Things ever since I came back to the Church in earnest years ago. He was definitely one of the more influential voices in the “conservative” Catholic world, and will be missed.
As an aside, I never liked the term conservative/liberal for the doctrinal differences within the Catholic Church. It makes it sound like it’s a political thing, and an easy template for Republican vs. Democrat, which it certainly is not. I prefer the term “traditionalists” for the movement that Father Neuhaus helped represent. The words may be similar, but it underlines that they are not the same thing. Many traditionalists will have voted for Barack Obama, and proud life long Democrats. At the same time, they bow to the Church and the Magisterium in humility. They should not — and are not — in conflict with each other.
This is just fantastic. Two British Anglican ministers convert to Roman Catholicism. This is happening more and more these days (a great thing, in my opinion), and now the inevitable — a father and son are now both Catholic priests. It’s very cool. As the Episcopal Church goes into a show motion schism with itself, a bunch of the more conservative/traditionalist side of it will seek to rejoin Rome.
Thanks to Splendor of Truth for finding this gem.
