I Listen to Facebook Conversations of Younger Catholics: I Get An Earful about What Makes Church of JPII and BXVI Tick (The Earful Is Not Pretty)

I've mentioned before, I think, that I have a number of Facebook friends who stand considerably to the right of me when it comes to matters Catholic. I'm not quite sure how I got connected to these particular folks. I've generally had an ecumenical approach to Facebook friendships, and have accepted most every invitation I've received to befriend someone at the Facebook site, assuming as I do so that all of us are enriched when we rub shoulders with many different kinds of people, and that my tiny perspective is hardly the perspective that's the fulcrum on which the entire world turns, and I need other perspectives to make mine complete.

More Brief Takes from Week's News: Pope Francis, Catholic Reform, and Liberation Theology

More brief takes from the past week's news--these focusing on discussions of Pope Francis and the Vatican:

Gospel. Good News. Is What. It's All. About. Commentators Continue to Parse Pope Francis's Recent Interview

Gospel. Good news. Is what. It's all. About.

My Theological Reflection on Pope Francis's Jesuit Interview: "God Is Encountered Walking, Along the Path"

Where is God?

More Commentary on John Paul II and His Legacy: Australian Priest Fr. Eric Hodgens on John Paul's "Lust for Power"

Fr. Eric Hodgens

Another posting I'd like to lift out of the vault of previous postings here, as the canonization of John Paul II is discussed--this is from January 2011, and features the commentary of an Australian priest in December 2010 about John Paul II and his legacy. What follows is that January 2011 posting, re-posted today:

"How Much Filth There Is in the Church": Jason Berry on the Flow of Corrupt Money in the Vatican, with Implications for JPII Canonization

As we continue thinking about and discussing the decision of Pope Francis to continue the plans for canonization of Pope John Paul II, I want to fish another article from my archives here. This is something I posted back in April 2010, which points to the important research of Jason Berry on the financial wheelings and dealings of Fr. Marcial Maciel inside the Vatican. I highly encourage you to read (or re-read) the Berry article to which the posting links. 

Belgian Lay Catholic's Letter to a French Priest Agitating Against Marriage Equality: Thierry Peltier vs. Abbé Grosjean, Competing Visions of Catholic Action

Yesterday, a Belgian Catholic, Thierry Peltier, published an open letter at the Mediapart website, responding to one of the Catholic leaders of the anti-marriage equality demonstrations in France, Abbé Pierre-Hervé Grosjean of the diocese of Versailles. Through his Twitter account, Google+, and Facebook, Grosjean has taken an active role in assisting the demonstrations against marriage equality in the streets of Paris. As his adroit use of online tools indicates, Grosjean is a representative of a generation of zealous young priests of the John Paul II-Benedict XVI era who think that the Catholic church needs to return to a belligerent confrontation with contemporary culture, to claim a high profile in instructing secular society about how to conduct its business.

A Reader Writes: What's This Foot Washing All About, Anyway (and Is There a Red State/Blue State Divide Here)?

In response to my posting earlier today about Pope Francis's choice to include women among those whose feet he washed in the Holy Thursday liturgy yesterday, a reader bosicO writes:

Tom Ehrich to Staunch Catholic Traditionalists: "Sorry to Burst Your Bubble"

At Religion News Service, Tom Ehrich maintains that the bubble of "establishment Christianity" in America is now bursting, as people leave churches, buildings become empty, money can't be found to pay for things, and "many people discover that their primary religious interest had been sustaining the institution":

Beautybeautybeauty! The Reform of the Reform, Liturgy, and the Cessation of Critical Questions

Catholic News Service distinguishes itself again (NOT!) with this bit of shlock touting the virtues of the "reformed reformed" liturgy entitled, absurdly, "The Call of Beauty."

The Cost of Keeping Lord Ray Fine-Clad

In his essay about why the hierarchy fears the nuns to which I just linked, Frank Cocozzelli notes that Catholics are now living in a reactionary (as opposed to conservative) "reign of terror," one of whose principal players is Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.  

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "What Really Did They Accomplish," Those Theologians of Vatican II?

Anonymous gets around a lot on Catholic blog sites.  (S)he often strikes me as having the temperament that ancient proto-psychological theories describe as choleric: given to fits of rage induced, the ancients thought, by an excess of bile in the system.  The term "chillax" hadn't been invented when the ancients talked about the four humors and what caused them.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Tics, Gesticulations, Swoops, and Flourishes Amidst Liturgical Bedlam

So many droppings, so little time.  I want to frame today's piece with a snippet that a reader sent to Andrew Sullivan recently.  The following isn't the birdcage dropping per se.  Instead, please regard it as the scoop with which I'll then pick up the Catholic birdcage dropping on which I really intend to focus:

On Conscience, the U.S. Bishops, and Manufactured Battles with the Obama Administration: David DeCosse at NCR

National Catholic Reporter is now carrying valuable commentary by David DeCosse, director of campus ethics programs at Santa Clara University, about the model of conscience the U.S. Catholic bishops are applying in their clashes with the Obama administration over "religious freedom" issues.  DeCosse focuses, in particular, on the recent battle about the HHS guidelines recommending coverage of contraception in health care plans, including in religiously owned institutions.  

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "My Aunt Is a Sister . . . ."

From this week's edition of "Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage": this anonymous reader responds to National Catholic Reporter's latest report about the Vatican investigation of American religious women by suggesting that orders of American nuns which implemented the reforms of Vatican II are dying, while conservative communities that have resisted Vatican II are thriving: 

We Go to Mass, We Experience the "New" Liturgy, We Leave Shaking Our Heads

And speaking of the "new" liturgical translations (I just did so in my posting about Michael Iafrate's music): as I've just said, Steve and I went to the Christmas vigil Mass with our friend Richard.  We went to the old cathedral, St. Mary's, in Chinatown in San Francisco.  When I last blogged about our highly selective and sporadic liturgy-attending experiences in the past year, we had gone to Mass with Steve's aunts as we took them on a trip to visit relatives around Minnesota.

Giovanni Franzoni on the Catholic Hierarchy's Attempt to Coerce Civil Society as Betrayal of Vatican II

Giovanni Franzoni

In the thread of comments following my posting about the attack on Hans Küng for his recent critique of Pope Benedict, Colleen Baker and Phil Ewing recommend a presentation that Giovanni Franzoni, a former Benedictine abbot, gave earlier this month at the 31st Congress of the Asociación de Teólogos y Teólogas Juan XXIII in Madrid.  A transcript of Franzoni's presentation is at the Iglesia Descalza blog site.

As Benedict Visits Germany: Hans Küng on What the Reform of the Reform Is Costing the Church

Yesterday, I wrote,

We Go to Mass, We Receive Orders: The Liturgical Revisions and Ongoing Betrayal of Catholic Pastoral Leadership

Steve and I went to Mass yesterday with his aunts.  For reasons I've explained on this blog, I don't take part in Catholic liturgical celebrations anymore.  The unjust treatment Steve and I have received from Catholic institutions as lay Catholic theologians who happen to be an openly gay couple contradicts what the church proclaims about the eucharist in such gross ways that we can no longer cope with the disparity between what's proclaimed and what's practiced, when it comes to eucharistic life. in our case and the case of many other Catholics unjustly treated by church officials. 

Notes from the Heartland, As We Travel through Minnesota

Notes from the American heartland:

Motel signs we see in Grand Forks on the first night of our trip through Minnesota (and a small part of North Dakota): the Settle Inn; the C'mon Inn; the Ideal Inn, which shares its premises with a laundromat called the Sioux-Per Suds; the Westward Ho.