From a 28 Jan. press release of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, USA, asking for the Womenpriest group to have its excommunication lifted, now that SSPX is being rehabilitated (http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/pressrelease10.htm, h/t Clerical Whispers):No priest pedophiles have been excommunicated. No bishops who were responsible for their continued placement in parishes after their pedophile history was known have been excommunicated. Theologians who teach and support Vatican II teachings and who support women's ordination are silenced and/or excommunicated. Women ordained as priests are excommunicated. Priests and laity who support women priests are excommunicated. But, priests who reject Vatican II and who deny the holocaust and who openly deny the full equality of women are "rehabilitated" after earlier excommunication?
What's wrong with this picture?
And, oh, by the way: breaking news. Clerical Whispers is also reporting that Benedict has just made Rev. Gerhard Wagner auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria.
Wagner comes to his new position with an . . . interesting . . . resumé. In 2005, he stated in a parish newsletter that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans as "divine retribution" for that city's tolerance of gay and lesbian persons. Wagner argued that God targeted nightclubs, brothels, and abortion clinics, in particular, with Katrina.
Oddly enough, my recollections of Katrina do not correspond to Wagner's. I recall the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny, the areas of the city in which the gay population is concentrated, being largely unscathed by the terrible hurricane, while middle-class, solid family-values areas like Lakeview, where two families who are friends of mine lost their houses, were totally ruined.
The more Benedict puts his leaner, meaner ecclesiology into motion now that he's pope, the more I am wondering if the way to the papal heart is anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia. The medicine of papal mercy seems to be reserved for select groups, indeed.
