Questions from a Ewe Responds to Archbishop Chaput About Excluding the "Irregular" from the Sacraments: "Here's What I Suggest. Walk Up to Your Local Priest and Ask about His Sex Life"

In recently published commentary on Archbishop Chaput's newly released guidelines to deal with "irregularities" in dispensation of the sacraments in his archdiocese, the blogger writing at Questions from a Ewe notes with her usual panache and verve that it's exceedingly odd that Chaput is concerned with "irregularity" of a sexual sort — well, with some folks' "irregularity — when it's well known that 50% of U.S. Catholic priests and an even higher percentage than this in other parts of the world are sexually active. All those priests are, in other words, leading the kind of "irregular" lives for which Archbishop Chaput wants to bar only openly LGBTQ Catholics and divorced and remarried Catholics not living together as brother and sister from the sacraments.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Wafers for Repentant Divorced and Remarried Folks, No Wafers for Any Gays in Loving, Committed Relationships

Talk about plain weird. What a snapshot of the Catholic "mind" — that is, of the mentality of some Catholics regarding their fellow human beings who are LGBT — the exchange following this comment by Kate at National Catholic Reporter yesterday is. Kate is responding to Joshua McElwee's report citing Cardinal Oswald Gracias, who says the synod's final recommendations will not include a recommendation for Communion for the divorced and remarried.

Notes from the Synod: "I’m Astonished That Many People Talk about Doctrine without Knowing What Doctrine Is," Or, Implications for the Future When Stupidity and Venality Carry the Day

At Commonweal, Grant Gallicho reports on statements made yesterday by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx at a Vatican press briefing about the synod on the family. According to Gallicho, Marx was asked by Edward Pentin of the ultra-right publication National Catholic Register to commnent on South African Cardinal Wilfred Naipier's statement on Tuesday that the synod should not take up theological or doctrinal matters (implication: those are set in stone and cannot be discussed, let alone altered).

As Talk of Mercy Continues in Rome, U.S. Archbishop Restricts Communion to Righteous, Another Gay Employee of a Catholic Ministry Is Fired, Etc.: There's the Church World, and Then There's the Real World

I wrote yesterday that while the men in Rome are nattering on about mercy and fashioning a church that's a field hospital for the wounded, something else, something quite different, continues to unfold for many of us in the real world at a distance from the Vatican. For LGBT people and for women, that something else is a decided signal from the men talking about mercy and healing that some people count more than others in their church. And that the bread heaped on the Catholic table is for some people and not for others.

Why I Keep Asking Where Francis Effect Is for Marginalized Catholics: Pretending Is Never Way to Build a Healthy Anything

When I keep asking where the Francis effect is for various groups of marginalized Catholics (like the black Catholics about whom Anthea Butler writes with first-hand testimony, or survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse, or Catholic women and millennials, or native Americans, or divorced  Catholics, or LGBT Catholics), I'm not blaming the pope for these problems. They're problems with and within the Catholic church in the U.S. I'm simply stating that talk about the Francis effect that is pure media spin, disembodied hype that overlooks the real-life situation of American Catholics in all their diversity, will hide those problems, pretend they do not exist, compound them — and pretending is not what we need.

It's never the way to build a healthy anything.

The photo of Pope Francis on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, 28 January 2014, is by Stefano Spaziani.

The Francis Effect: Putting Rhetoric Together with Reality on Eve of Pope's Visit (2)

Note: this article is part two of a two-part series. The first part of this article is here.

The Francis effect? Anecdote #1: Mark Joseph Stern comments today on last night's GOP debates,

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Shouldn't the Synod Documents Label Couples Using Birth Control As 'Wounded'?"

Patrick T. Reardon commenting in National Catholic Reporter on the strange (and more than a little biased) way in which the final statement on the family produced at last year's Catholic synod on the Family talks about "wounded" families:

Jerry Slevin on Pastoral Treatment of Divorced and Remarried Catholics, and Popes Benedict and Francis: Which Pope Is Infallible?

In a recent posting at his Christian Catholicism blog, Jerry Slevin points readers to William McDonough's Commonweal essay about Pope Benedict XVI and the issue of divorce entitled "Right the First Time." As Jerry notes, McDonough reports that Benedict is in the process of issuing his opera omnia. Nine volumes of his theological work have now been published.

Theologian José Arregi on Synod on Family: Was It Worth It?

At her Iglesia Descalza site, Rebel Girl offers a translation of commentary on the synod on the family by Basque theologian José Arregi from the journal Redes Cristianas. Arregi frames what he has to say about the synod by noting that the Greek word we render as "synod" has the root meaning of "journeying together": as he states, 

Synod on Family: Commentary by Juan José Tamayo, Jamie Manson, and Frank Brennan — "Trying to Confine the Genie to the Episcopal Kitchen"

As another work week ends, a round-up of several more statements about the recent Catholic synod on the family well worth reading:

Towards the Next Synod: Jerry Slevin on What Pope Francis Needs to Do If He's Really Serious About Reform

At a discussion thread here earlier today, some of you may have seen that I asked Jerry Slevin if he could perhaps summarize an argument he has just made at greater length in a posting at his Christian Catholicism site. In this posting, Jerry argues that, if Pope Francis is to be effective as a reformer, he must aim for the following at the final synod on the family for which the one that has just occurred set the initial stage:

Questions from a Ewe on the Eve of the Synod on the Family

As a complement to my ten modest theological conclusions on the eve of the synod on the family, here are some questions from Questions from a Ewe to the church's pastors, as the synod nears. This blogger asks the men running the church, "Are you threatened welcoming 'sinners' to table because they might interfere with some delusion of your own perfection?"

NCR Report on Vatican Questionnaire in U.S.: Only One-Third of Dioceses Made It Available

For those following the discussion of the questionnaire that the Vatican asked bishops around the world to make available to Catholic laypersons in advance of the Synod on the Family, National Catholic Reporter has just published a valuable report by Michael O'Loughlin. NCR reports that it has done an exhaustive study of U.S. dioceses to find out what percentage made the questionnaire available to the laity, and what percentage has subsequently reported to lay Catholics on the responses of those who answered the questionnaire.

More Reports in Preparation for Vatican Synod on the Family: Spain, Japan, Diocese of Westminster, England, United States

As a new work week begins, I want to mention a few more reports that have recently been issued summarizing the response of lay Catholics in various parts of the world to the Vatican questionnaire on issues including contraception, same-sex marriage, and divorce, as the Vatican prepares for the Synod on the Family. At Iglesia Descalza, Rebel Girl offers a translation of a recent article in the Spanish journal El Periódico reporting on the response of Spanish Catholics to the questionnaire.

Vatican Survey of Catholics for Synod on the Family: More Evidence (England, Wales, Canada) of "Huge Gap" Between Magisterial Teaching and People of God

Reports continue to come in from various parts of the world, noting how Catholics in various places have responded to the questionnaire that Pope Francis asked bishops to use as they solicited lay input prior to the Synod on the Family. On Saturday, I alluded to the survey results gathered by the bishops of England and Wales. I did so by linking to this Tablet editorial statement that decries the decision of these bishops to withhold the survey results from Catholics in their region. 

Univision Poll: Global Fracture Lines in Catholic Church Over Family Issues, with Widespread Rejection of Teaching on Contraception and Other Issues

As Conrad Noll points out in a comment here last evening, the Univision poll about which I blogged yesterday (and briefly on Sunday), has been very much in the news in the last several days. Conrad states,

Taking A Close Look at the "Church Teaching" That Vatican Media Apologists Claim U.N. Attacks: There's Their World, and Then There's the Real World

For Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), David Clohessy responds to Austen Ivereigh's claim that the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child "ambushed" the Vatican with its recent report: 

Footnote to Report of German Bishops to Vatican in Preparation for Synod on Family: Swiss Catholics Weigh In

A footnote to my posting yesterday about the report of the German bishops to the Vatican about the results of the Vatican survey in preparation for the Synod on the Family: as I noted yesterday, Tom Heneghan summarizes the German bishops' report for Reuters by noting that among German Catholics, "The Church's statements on premarital sexual relations, homosexuality, on those divorced and remarried, and on birth control . . . are virtually never accepted, or are expressly rejected in the vast majority of cases."

German Bishops Release Results of Survey for Synod on Family: "Rarely Has an Institution Received Such Low Marks from Its Members"

Yesterday, the Catholic bishops of Germany made public the results of the survey of lay Catholics mandated by the Vatican in preparation for the Synod on the Family. As Tom Heneghan reports for Reuters, the bishops summarize the findings of the survey as follows--though German Catholics welcome the church's call to build stable, happy families,

In the News: Little Sisters of Poor and Affordable Care Act, German Catholics on Vatican Questionnaire, Pope and Rolling Stone

A mid-week selection of articles about themes Catholic that have caught my eye in the past few days: