The last three years have confirmed for me the reality that the RCC is no longer in touch with the people it pretends to serve, especially not when a group of isolated and egotistical old men in Rome are considered to be the protectors of the faith. About the only thing they protect is their own lifestyle and they are loath to share it with anyone not deemed worthy, including 50% of the RCC membership.
Now, a new article has confirmed for me that I am no longer interested in the RCC and organized religion generally since they all have a hierarchy system that preserves the status quo or tries to drag the faithful back in time.
Here’s the article that helped me to “see the light” … Raymond Burke, the priest quoted extensively in this article, is an example of the sort of RCC the Vatican hierarchy wants to be running things.
Fortunately, I can think for myself. Joe Ratzinger, this is my resignation.
Cardinal Burke on nuns’ group: ‘If it can’t be reformed, then it doesn’t have a right to continue’
BY PATRICK B. CRAINE
http://tinyurl.com/942q4ee
Fri Aug 10, 2012 11:27 EST
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A senior Vatican prelate has fired a fresh salvo in the Vatican’s effort to reform the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, with a warning that the rogue organization could be shut down if they fail to implement the reforms demanded by the Vatican.
“If it can’t be reformed, then it doesn’t have a right to continue,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura, told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo in a Thursday interview for The World Over.
“How in the world can these consecrated religious who have professed to follow Christ more closely … be opposed to what the Vicar of Christ is asking? This is a contradiction,” he said.
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) launched the reform of the LCWR in April with a hard-hitting document raising serious doctrinal issues with the group, including its failure to uphold Church teaching on the right to life, homosexuality, and women’s ordination. The organization represents about 80% of America’s 57,000 women religious.
Cardinal William Levada, then-prefect of the CDF, warned in June that the LCWR could be decertified if they fail to implement the reforms.
The group, which has advocated radical feminism for decades, has fought back, framing the reform as a case of a patriarchal Vatican seeking to exercise control over women.
“The question is, ‘Can you be Catholic and have a questioning mind?’ That’s what we’re asking,” Sister Pat Farrell, LCWR’s president, told National Public Radio in July. “This mandate … puts us in a position of being under the control of certain bishops, that is not a dialogue. If anything, it appears to be shutting down dialogue.”
“The teaching and interpretation of the faith can’t remain static and really needs to be reformulated, rethought in light of the world we live in,” she added.
In his World Over interview, Cardinal Burke told Arroyo that the issue is simply a question of the sisters remaining faithful to their vows. “Consecrated religious … are bound to the Vicar of Christ by a very significant bond because they have professed … to follow Christ in an exemplary way and so to be a source of strength and inspiration for the whole People of God,” he explained.
“The question now is for conversion to the true nature of religious life and to accept gratefully and humbly what the Holy Father is asking through his representatives and to reform the organization,” he added.
The prelate also noted that few people realize the Holy See actually founded the LCWR, in 1956. So, he asked, “Why should it not have a right to say ‘look this organization is no longer fulfilling the mission for which we founded it’?”
5 comments:
Hi VP
The question is, ‘Can you be Catholic and have a questioning mind?’
That question is just as valid in the Protestant religion.
A very thoughtful post my friend as I am in the midst of struggling about the doctrines of my church.
GFB,
I don’t have difficulty with the fundamental doctrines – incarnation, death, resurrection – my belief is solid.
My difficulty is with the jackasses (to quote Oscar Leroy) who appear to be in charge of the RCC. It’s a group of old men who are so determined to maintain the status quo that they will go to any length to keep their positions secure. Burke, the fellow quoted in the story, is a classic jackass. Previously Archbishop of St. Louis, he was so traditional that he wanted to pull everything back to pre-Vatican 2 days, obviously something that endeared him to Joe Ratzinger, the present Pope. They both share a fondness for Latin, a dead language, incomprehensible to 99.9999999% of the earth’s population.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the Archbishop of Chicago until his death in 1996, promoted the notion of “Common Ground” which he described this way, “"all of us will be refined in the fires of genuine engagement; and the whole church will be strengthened for its mission in the new millennium.” The idea was to engage in dialogue that would bring Catholics closer together and result in a stronger faith community.
The current crop of old guys in the Vatican has thrown that out the window along with the Vatican 2 reforms and are reinstituting the top down style of leadership better suited to a dictatorship than a faith community.
The problem for me GFB is that as I’ve explored a few other faith communities, I find at their core, the same sort of top down hierarchical style of leadership that pays little attention to the people in the pew as long as they put their money in the plate once a week.
What I think we need is a return to the time of Saul of Tarsus when small house churches were the way the faith communities shared their common beliefs, without the divisions of denomination. If we can get away from the ideas of Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Pentecostalism, etc. then perhaps there is hope; otherwise, I fear the crapper awaits.
I believe here and in the States there are folks fed up with the trapping of organized religion gathering in homes to study the bible as was done in the time of Saul.
Most so called 'Christians' are not followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ.If they were the divisions the pomp the wealth the divisions would not be part of their belief.
Jesus told us that"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"
This passage is in John 14:6 and in these times I keep it in my mind. It is plain spoken, to the point and cuts through all the crap in organized Christianity.
I must have missed this post of yours, don't know how, Veep.
Interesting how you have come to the realization that I had a long time ago (my mother's Catholic dictated symphiosotomy being a part of it, brothers being abused another) about these old male fossils in their finery and wealth dictating to the masses while condoning horrors within their own ranks.
I could go on and on but I am so very pleased that you have woken up too.
:)
XO
WWW
I missed this post, Veep, don't know why. Just trolling your blog to make sure you were still alive (are you? you are, right?)
I did a post on FB about Jimmy Carter and his leaving of the Southern Baptist Church. He is one of my heroes, always has been.
As are you now.
XO
WWW
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