German Catholic Bishops on Dismal Failure of Predecessors in Nazi Period; Anne Barrett Doyle on Anniversary of Vos Estis Lux Mundi

Writing in The Tablet yesterday, Christa Pongratz-Lippit reports on an in-depth study the German Catholic bishops recently commissioned in preparation for the 75th anniversary of World War II. The study, which is entitled in English "German Bishops During World War II," focuses on the role of the German bishops during the Nazi period. I'm highlighting this article as a footnote to my recent discussion of Susan Neiman's book Learning from the Germans.

Mark Shea on What Viganò, Burke, and Bannon's Anti-Francis Gay-Bashing Is About: "This is About the Rich Seizing Control of the Church, not About the Protection of Victims"

Kavanaugh Has Exposed the Savage Amorality of America's Ruling Class https://t.co/PgdtZykKrw

— Mary Aktay (@maryaktay) October 6, 2018

Mark Shea, "1 Percenters attempt to buy control of the Church," hits the nail right on the head:

Latest Viganò Commentary: "Vatican Receives a Letter in *November 2000* Detailing a Mess of Allegations Against McCarrick. Three Months Later, Instead of Sanctions, St. JPII Gives McCarrick a Red Hat"

The Viganistas have an obvious timing problem. The secret sanctions was the clever solution to bridging the gap, but it may have been too clever by half. pic.twitter.com/xlI9xAFY6T

— Polycarpio✝️🙏 (@SuperMartyrio) September 6, 2018

In case you haven't been following every last bit of news about the Viganò story, I've done you the service of gathering a selection of recent commentary that updates what we've already discussed here. The story continues to develop right up to the present, with the denial published yesterday by Napa Institute co-founder Timothy Busch that he was involved in drafting Viganò's statement — Napa Institute, which gave shelter to disgraced St. Paul-Minneapolis archbishop Nienstedt after Viganò sought to shut down investigation of allegations that Nienstedt had been involved in activities very much like those for which Viganò is now scoring McCarrick. Here's more commentary:

Media Begin Filling in Picture of Those Orchestrating Viganò's Attack on Francis: Predictable Players with Predictable Anti-LGBTQ Agenda

Thanks to @nwinfield, @elizabethjdias, and @lauriegnyt we now know of two of Archbishop Vigano's ghostwriters: Italian journalist @MarcoTosatti and American lawyer Timothy Busch

— Joshua McElwee (@joshjmac) August 28, 2018

As I've been saying, the Viganò press event is and has been orchestrated: completely. We have increasing evidence of this, and of how it parallels what a cabal of hard-right anti-LGBTQ political and religious players sought to do to Francis with Kim Davis in collaboration with Viganò in 2015. As in that débacle, the current events being orchestrated by Viganò and his cabal involve some of the worst figures on the American Catholic scene, collaborating with European ones, all intent on topping Francis' papacy and mounting an ugly anti-gay purge within the Catholic church, reasserting as decisively as possible that the Catholic community hates and intends to attack and exclude LGBTQ human beings from God's redemptive plan:

Documents in Settlement of Curtis Wehmeyer Case Reveal Vatican Interference in Investigation of Allegations about Archbishop Nienstedt's Sexual Improprieties

WHAT HE'S SAYING: Well, there you have it at the top of this posting. Archbishop Nienstedt's full statement in response to the revelations contained in documents in last week's settlement of the Curtis Wehmeyer case in St. Paul-Minneapolis can be found appended to this article by Marino Eccher in Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Nienstedt's response: 

Catholic-Themed News: Nienstedt at Napa, Chaput and Amoris Laetitia, Joe Paterno and What He Knew, Violence of Catholic Teaching about LGBTQ People

Brother Body can be a real ass sometimes, can't he? I'm dealing with some health things right now, and finding it hard to concentrate on blogging. Please forgive the "lightness" of this posting, which is more or less a list of Catholic-themed news items or commentary I'd like to report to you, as I work on encouraging Brother Body to stop being so much of a donkey to me.

Cousin of John Nienstedt Reports That He Told Nienstedt of Abuse by Nienstedt's Priest-Friend, and Nienstedt Did Nothing: The Unholy Trinity of Lies, Secrets, and Silence

The story told in the video above is one to which a valued reader of this blog alerted me yesterday. The report is from KMSP (Fox News) in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. As you'll see when you watch the video, a reporter from this news outlet, Tom Lyden, interviews a cousin of deposed Twin Cities archbishop John Nienstedt — Mike Hinske — who maintains that a priest-friend of Nienstedt's, Samuel Ritchey, sexually abused him when he was 16 years old. Lyden also interviews an unwilling Nienstedt.

Pathology of Internalized Homophobia in Gay-Bashing Catholic Clerics: "How Strange Their Psyches Must Be As a Result...and Sometimes Dangerous As Well"

The synchonicity of conversations on the worldwide web never fails to intrigue me — discourse community linking to discourse community when they're to all appearances not connected at all. As Mary Q pointed out in a comment here two days ago, at the same time (roughly) that I was having a conversation with Chris Morley here about the peculiar pathology of the Roman Catholic clerical system, which intermixes hypocrisy (especially about matters sexual involving the clergy) with power and the abuse of power, with the ravening desire of career clerics to be at the top of an ecclesiastical ladder in which being on top means using, hurting, throwing away a lot of folks at the bottom, a reader of Jennifer Haselberger's blog was leaving a comment there very similar to my statements to Chris.

As Pope Arrives: "Until Francis Gets the House in Order on the Matter of Sexual Abuse of Clergy, All the Other Pastoral and Charitable Efforts of Our Church Are Like Sandcastles"

Two simple (but are they simple?) reminders this morning about the abuse situation in the Catholic church, and the imperative need of Catholic pastoral leaders to address it — from the highest level of church governance:

Nienstedt Resigns: "My Leadership Has Unfortunately Drawn Attention Away from the Good Works of His Church"

This is news to which to wake up on a Monday morning: the archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, and his deputy archbishop Lee Anthony Piché, have resigned, as the archdiocese they lead is under criminal investigation. Nicole Winfield reports for AP.

Criminal Charges Filed Against Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis in Abuse Cover-Up

As Chris has noted in a comment here today, this noontime the Ramsey County, Minnesota, prosecutor's office announced that it has filed criminal charges against the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. Mitch Smith writes for New York Times:

Patricia Miller's Takeaway re: Recent Pew Study Showing U.S. Catholic Church in "Demographic Free-Fall," with Notes about Recent Débacle re: LGBT Youth Conference in Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis

As I noted last week, the most recent Pew Research Center "Religious Landscape" report on the state of religious affiliation in the U.S. finds that, among Christian groups, the greatest loss of adherents in the period 2007-2015 has been in the Catholic community. Pew finds that nearly a third of American adults report having been raised Catholic, and of that group, 41% no longer identify as Catholic. 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics. As the Pew study notes, "No other religious group in the survey has such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains."

Jennifer Haselberger on Current Status of Nienstedt Investigation: Contextual Information

This is a footnote to what I posted yesterday about the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis and its choice to hire a high-powered criminal lawyer for its ongoing investigation of allegations that St. Paul-Minneapolis archbishop John Nienstedt has behaved inappropriately with adult males. Yesterday, at her blog site, the former chancellor for canonical affairs of the archdiocese, Jennifer Haselberger, who resigned her position last year in protest of the archdiocese's handling of the abuse crisis, provides some information "by way of context" to interpret what's going on now in the archdiocese.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Who's Paying for High-Powered Criminal Lawyer Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis Has Hired?

At Commonweal, Grant Gallicho reports that as it investigates allegations that its archbishop, John Nienstedt, has behaved improperly with adult males, the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has retained the services of a high-powered criminal lawyer, Peter Wold. (Note: in case this isn't perfectly clear, Nienstedt heads the archdiocese investigating these allegations.)

More News: Updates to Stories about Archbishop Nienstedt, Rev. Frank Schaefer, David Gushee, and LDS Church

And finally this morning, some odds and ends providing updates on stories we've discussed here in the past: 

Gay Music Director of Parish Who Marries? Scandal; Priests Who Engage in Sexual Improprieties Sitting on Marriage Tribunals? Not So Much

How's this for news? A headline in yesterday's Star Tribune (Minneapolis) reads, "Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis Assigns Accused Priests to Marriage Annulment Panel." Jean Hopfensperger reports that the marriage tribunal for the archdiocese, which makes rulings on the fate of the troubled marriages of Catholics who turn to the tribunal for annulments, has had sitting on its judgment bench priests known to have engaged in sexual improprieties.

Archbishop Nienstedt, Firing of Gay Catholic Employees, and Upholding Teachings of the Church: Critical Reflection

Yesterday, I noted that anti-gay culture-warrior archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis forced the resignation of a music director, Jamie Moore, in a Catholic parish in Victoria, Minnesota, after Moore married his partner last weekend. I linked to a report about this story by Madeleine Baran of Minnesota NPR. 

Midweek News Miscellany: Story about Paul Huff and Tom Wojtowick, New Pew Forum Survey, Nienstedt Forces Out Gay Music Minister, Gay Jesuit Quits

A midweek miscellany of articles, several of them commenting on topics we've discussed here recently:

Family Values, Theologians, and Archbishop Nienstedt: A Theological Discussion Pertinent to the Synod on the Family

I just wrote that I'm seeing a strong hunger for authentic dialogue expressed in much commentary in Catholic circles about  the upcoming synod on the family. The hunger for authentic dialogue manifests itself as an impatience with rhetoric that never moves beyond the realm of symbol to effective action. Here's a snapshot of where many American Catholics may be right now, vis-a-vis that hunger for . . . something: for real change in our church and how it does business, for effective action in areas like the abuse crisis, for authentic dialogue that involves talking with and not down to.

National Catholic Reporter's Call for Archbishop Nienstedt to Be Transparent and Accountable: Sauce for Nienstedt's Goose Also Sauce for NCR's Gander, in Censoring Jerry Slevin?

As Jerry Slevin pointed out in a posting at his Christian Catholicism site yesterday, in various threads, readers of National Catholic Reporter articles continue to discuss his recent banning by NCR. As I noted in a posting a number of days ago, recently, when Jerry tried logging onto the NCR site to leave comments, he began receiving a message informing him that he had been banned from commenting at the site. Jerry also reported that he had contacted NCR managerial staff to ask why this had been done to him, but had received no explanation.