End-of-Week News Roundup: Archbishop John Myers Back in News, Now for Bling-Bling Retirement House

Archbishop John Myers

As this work week ends, an offering of observations from news of the week that will, I hope, inspire you to read the whole article from which the amuse-gueule is taken: these are all about the absolutely stunning decision of Newark, New Jersey, Archbishop John Myers to expand his 4,500-square-foot retirement house by adding to it a 3,000-square-foot addition (with the $500,000 renovation bill being footed by the archdiocese's lay Catholics):

Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis Releases Financial Report: Curious Steep Jump in Communications Expenses Coinciding with Anti-Gay Marriage Initiative

In the financial report recently released (pdf) by the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis providing details of its financial records for 2013, there's an interesting detail that, to my mind, richly deserves a great deal of attention. As Brian Roewe notes for National Catholic Reporter and Jean Hopfensperger and Tony Kennedy for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the report shows the archdiocese's operating expenses jumping by about $9 million in 2012.* Part of the reason is that the archdiocese, which faces an onslaught of lawsuits related to clerical abuse of minors, added $5 million to its litigation reserve fund in 2012.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "'New Evangelization' Tactics Seem Based on Incorrect Assumptions That Lapsed Catholics Don’t Know Church Dogma"

This is one of the good ones, one of the birdcage droppings that fertilize the mind: Questions from a Ewe asks why it is that the "Francis effect" seems to be having little impact among American Catholics, when it comes to Mass attendance. In her diocese in 2013, 6 of 10 diocesan counties had the lowest records of weekly Mass attendance ever, since anyone began counting. As she notes, this echoes Pew findings, which show Mass attendance among American Catholics continuing to decline despite the Francis "bump."

Jeff Sharlet on Ditto Boys: Laying Bare the Ideology of Male-Bonded Obedience in New Religious Movements Like the Fellowship and Opus Dei

In the excerpt from his letter to Pope Francis on "new evangelization" that I featured yesterday, Matthew Fox maintains that many of the cultic "lay" movements within Catholicism today that are spearheading the "new evangelization" aren't about proclaiming the gospel at all. Groups such as Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ substitute for the gospel, Fox argues, a "theology" of christofascist authoritarianism that boils the entire Christian faith down into a bare command to obey--to obey the highest authority figure in one's group, which is, for Catholics, the pope.

Matthew Fox, Letters to Pope Francis: On the "New" Evangelization

More excerpts from Matthew Fox's book Letters to Pope Francis: in an important letter in the book, Fox discusses the "new" evangelization that was so strongly promoted by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and encourages Francis to look closely at what the term "evangelize" actually means, as he himself promotes the church's mission of proclaiming the good news of the gospel to the world: 

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Equating Marriage Equality with a Loss of Religious Freedom . . . Is Utter Nonsense"

This is one of the good ones, and not the kind that need to go into the compost heap because they're so noisome there's no other place to put them--David Hart responding to an article by Brian Roewe on how various states are propelling the push for marriage equality in the U.S.: