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Over at Chiesa, Vaticanista Sandro Magister has walked way back his scoop that Vatican Secretary of State Tarciso Bertone was so appalled by last month's statement on financial reform from the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace that he ordered that "any new Vatican text will have to be authorized in advance" by himself. Not:

With respect what www.chiesa originally reported, it should be noted that the requirement of advance review by the secretariat of state applies exclusively to texts that bear the signature of the pope, and not to those simply signed by the heads of one of the offices of the Roman curia.

The memo therefore cannot refer, strictly speaking, to the document from the pontifical council for justice and peace presented at the Vatican press office on October 24, entitled "Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority." A document not signed  by Benedict XVI, but only by the heads of that dicastery.

Loosely speaking too. Because it looks like Pope Benedict himself is down with that document and its dim view of the wages of the current international financial system. Getting off the plane in Benin a week ago, he warned against "unconditional surrender to the law of the market or that of finance" and, in a prepared document, asked all members of the church to "work and speak out in favor of an economy that cares for the poor and is resolutely opposed to an unjust order which, under the pretext of reducing poverty, has often helped to aggravate it."

I think that's a request that includes George Weigel, Donald McClarey, and the rest of the conservative Catholic crowd that expends so much energy trying to prove that Rome does not mean what Rome says when the subject is Capitalism. It's time for them either to get with the program or admit that they disagree with the Magisterium on this subject. Finita la commedia!

Over the past several of weeks, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue has pulled out all the stops on behalf of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, who was indicted in Jackson County last month for failing to report suspicion of child abuse by one of his priests. Donohue has attacked the prosecutor who brought the case, the newspaper that reported on it, the abuse victims' organization that has emphasized its importance, and the family that filed a related civil suit. He has journeyed to the City of Fountains to "energize the Catholic community in defense of" its bishop.

Why is Donohue so determined to demonstrate that Finn has been unjustly charged in the matter of Fr. Shawn Ratigan, who in August was indicted by a federal grand jury on 13 counts of abusing five young girls? In response to my criticism of his defense of Finn, Donohue referred me to an essay by Missouri lawyer Michael Quinlan that was posted on the EWTN website November 10. Relying on the factual record provided in the August 31 report on the Ratigan affair made by former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, Quinlan argues that the law Finn is charged with breaking does not apply to the circumstances of the case, and that therefore: "The prosecutor's overzealous misuse of that law in these circumstances violates constitutional due process protections and denies rights to fundamental fairness." I'm not persuaded.

Obviously, however, subjects such as the two to three year old child in the nude photograph were in no position to make a complaint. The nature of the photographs, combined with the fact that no one had ruled out the possibility that Fr. Ratigan, an avid and frequent photographer, had taken some of them, gave rise to at least a suspicion of child abuse that should have been investigated.

This, of course, is the basis for Finn's subsequent indictment.

One could go on. In his attacks, Donohue repeatedly declares that "none" of the photographic images found on Ratigan's computer was pornographic. But in fact, the Graves report concludes the opposite (pp. 95-96)--specifically, that some of the photos meet the standard of "lascivious exhibition of the genitals" defined in Missouri law as constituting child pornography.

Here it's important to be aware of the nature of the most disturbing photos. Discovered by diocesan information systems manager Julie Creech, these were contained in a computer folder with an undisclosed name (the victim's?) on it.

The first showed a little girl, face visible, standing and holding a blanket. In a "staged sequence," the photos depicted a girl lying in a bed, from the waist down, and focused on the crotch. The girl was wearing a diaper, but with each photo, the diaper was moved gradually to expose her genitals. By the last photo, her genitals were fully exposed. According to Ms. Creech, there were approximately six to eight pictures in this sequence of photos; two displayed fully exposed genitals and one displayed her fully exposed buttocks. The little girl's face was not visible in the staged sequence, but due to her apparent physical size and the fact that the photos were in the same folder, Ms. Creech assumed the photos were of the same little girl whose face appeared in the initial picture.

It seems perverse to consider this staged toddler striptease show as anything but pornographic--or, for that matter, lacking an identifiable victim.

Although there is some question of exactly how knowledgeable Finn was of the photographic details, the Graves report says that Creech had informed the diocese's Vicar General, Monsignor Robert Murphy, both verbally and in writing of what she had found; and that Murphy relayed the information to Finn. And Finn made clear in his interview for the Graves report that he had more than an inkling of what the photos signified. Asked why he did not inform the members of Ratigan's parish of them when he reassigned the priest, he said it would have been "like yelling fire in a crowded theater."

Under the circumstances, and given Finn's previous knowledge of the principal's letter of complaint, charging him with the misdemeanor of "Failure of a Mandated Reporter to Report" does not seem like a close call. The fact that the bishop last week agreed to participate in a diversion program in Clay County, all but admitting guilt rather than face a second state indictment, is sufficient evidence that his lawyers understand the weakness of his position.

So why would the Catholic League--formally independent of the Church but nevertheless closely connected to the hierarchy--go so far out of its way to mount a defense of Bishop Finn? As the first American bishop ever to be charged with covering up a child abuse case, Finn has become the poster boy for a new standard in the criminal justice system: When there's a question of child abuse in the Catholic Church, it's the bishop who bears responsibility for notifying the civil authorities. Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has made an example of Finn. Donohue is doing everything in his power to dissuade other prosecutors from following it.

On a more serious note, Gibson writes of the firing of Joe Paterno and his boss, Penn State President Graham Spanier:

Comparisons to the Catholic Church continue to work as the dominant explanation for how this could happen.

But Catholic parishioners tended not to riot in protest when, say, Cardinal Law is run out of Boston. PSU students, on the other hand, are not happy about Paterno's ouster.

It's true that Boston Catholics did not mount protests when Cardinal Law stole off to his gilded Roman cage. But the Boston Globe was in fact very concerned that there would be such. Previously, the Globe had caught considerable flak for what were considered assaults on the archdiocese, and the newspaper girded its loins for demonstrations outside its Dorchester home as it prepared to launch its investigative series in 2002.

To the surprise of the journalists and (to judge by their initial reactions to the series) of Law & Co. as well, that dog didn't bark, much less bite. To the contrary, instead of attacking the messenger, parishioners turned on the institution that had betrayed their trust. It's a commentary on how much more disaffected Boston Catholics had grown from their church than the Nittany Lions have from theirs. 

So Daniel Avila, the USCCB's "marriage guy" who wrote that column in the Boston Pilot attributing same-sex attraction to the devil, has gotten the heave-ho--as the result of news coverage subsequent to the Pilot's taking the column off its website and replacing it with a retraction from him. (Reprinted here after jump.) He had, it seems, committed the theological error of implying that, unlike the rest of us, those with same-sex attractions are neither "created in the image and likeness of God" nor possessed of "inviolable dignity."

And yet, and yet. The column (reprinted after the jump) begins with a conundrum that makes you think that Avila has been struggling with his Catholic conscience over the same-sex marriage issue. Because it's one thing to be an evangelical who opposes SSM just because you think the Bible forbids homosexual acts. It's another to be a Catholic committed to a whole natural law anthropology:

More than once I have heard from or about Catholics upset with the Church for its insistence that sexual relations be limited to marriage between husband and wife. Does not this moral rule force people with same-sex attraction into lives of loneliness? If they are born that way, then why should they be punished by a restriction that does not account for their pre-existing condition? God wants everyone to be happy, and for persons with same-sex attraction is not their happiness to be found in the fulfillment of that attraction? Some seek to change the Church's teaching on marriage or have left the Church because of it. They believe either that God through the Church ignores the needs of people or that the Church misunderstands what God desires.

That is, if God causes same-sex attraction, and yet commands that it not be satisfied, then this is divine cruelty. Or, if God causes same-sex attraction, then it must be the divine will that those with the attraction should act on it and it is the Church that is being cruel in its teaching or at the very least tragically mistaken about what God wants. In either case, the belief that the Church is wrong on this issue starts from a faulty premise. God does not cause same-sex attraction.

If, as Avila's retraction suggests, God does cause same-sex attraction--or, at any rate, has caused same-sex attraction to be part of the natural order of things (and there's plenty of zoology to indicate that such is the case), then the premise is not faulty. Asked to comment on the situation, Mary Ann Walsh, the USCCB's director of media relation had this to offer: "While the general population has debated whether it's nurture or nature that leads to a homosexual inclination, the church has not posed any theory in that regard." And that's the rock on which the Catholic church has built the natural law edifice of its opposition to SSM.

Four years ago, a bipartisan group of prominent Catholic laity led by former Ambassador-to-the- Vatican Thomas Melady put out a statement calling for greater civility in American politics and got slammed for their effort by Catholic riiht-wingers who considered this an assault on the pro-life movement. And inasmuch as the statement opposed bishops' denying Communion to pro-choice politicians, you can understand why the right-wingers thought so.

Now, Melady and Co. have released a new statement attacking the anti-Mormon remarks of Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress and expressing their "determination to assure that not only civility be maintained in the public discourse but that all inclinations to raise the issue of personal religious affiliation be avoided."

As Catholics, we have felt the sting of bias in previous national elections. We share the concern of many of our citizens of all religious faiths that allowing the question of a candidate's religion to be subject to public ridicule is a grave regression from what we have accomplished in our forward movement as Americans since the establishment of our Republic.

Thus far, there's been no pushback from the right. Indeed, the statement has received virtually no notice at all since being reported by Michael Sean Winters in his NCR blog. It's pretty clear that conservative Catholics barely have anti-Catholicism from the right on their radar screens. Note how quickly Bill Donohue shut up about Jeffress after receiving assurances from Rick Perry that he didn't share Jeffress' point of view.

This strikes me as altogether too blithe. Evangelicals may not, these days, harbor the same kind of animus against Catholics that they once did. But don't think for a moment that anti-Catholicism won't be working its way through the evangelical underground should either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum come to the fore as the Un-Romney in the GOP presidential sweepstakes. To paraphrase Pastor Niemoeller, "First they came for the Mormons. But I wasn't a Mormon..."

Back in the days when the Catholic Church first started growing academic theologians, some episcopal powers-that-be grew concerned about some novel ideas about God being advanced by nascent scholasticism's enfant terrible, Master Peter Abelard. In 1121, Master Peter was summoned before a church council at Soissons and made to defend himself. But the proceeding was stacked against him. Though he had a chance to speak, he didn't get the free hearing that the distinguished bishop of Chartres, Geoffrey, thought he deserved. The same held true 20 years later, when the most powerful figure in Latin Christendom, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, got Abelard hailed before a tribunal in Sens. In both cases, the accusers knew that they were no match for him in argument. In both cases, he was condemned and the offending writings burned.

What brings Abelard's predicament to mind is the situation in which Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham Uuniversity, finds herself: twice the victim of rebuke from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for writing things about God that in their view are not up to Catholic snuff; and twice not afforded the opportunity to defend herself in person. Unlike the 12th-century authorities, the USCCB's Secretariat for Doctrine didn't feel like it even had to go through the motions of giving Sr. Elizabeth the chance to confront her accusers face to face--although its chairman, Washington's Cardinal Donald Wuerl, pretends otherwise. Unlike St. Bernard, +Wuerl has not, at least so far, admitted that he might not be up to debating points of doctrine with the likes of Sr. Elizabeth.

To be sure, it's not as though there isn't a credentialed theologian in the house. He's Fr. Thomas Weinandy, and he serves as the Secretariat's executive director. It's a safe bet that his books on whether God suffers and/or changes have not sold anywhere near as well as the popular volume that got Sr. Elizabeth condemned--Quest for the Living God (number 4,508 on today's Amazon best seller list). OK, that's a cheap shot.

But you've got to wonder why Fr. Thomas wouldn't have sense enough to warn his bosses not to get involved in a public pissing match with the Catholic theological establishment. Then again, the USCCB seems disposed these days to hire staff members who embarrass their own members by writing articles that have to be retracted claiming that science shows same-sex attraction to be the work of the devil. You've also got to wonder about the role of the president of the USCCB, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, in all this. Sr. Elizabeth works in his diocese, after all, and he's supposed to look out for those who teach theology there. Peter Abelard had Geoffrey of Chartres trying to look out for him. Elizabeth Johnson has Tim of New York trying not so much.

No one has ever accused OSV--national tabloid for rank-and-file Massgoers--of being a bastion of liberalism. And it isn't. But it is an honest broker of Church teaching, let the secular ideological chips fall where they may. And if the right-wing likes of Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, George Weigel, and Mark Brumley belittle Vatican concerns about economic justice, OSV is not afraid to call them out. You go, rag!

Market is great
Market is good
Let us thank Market
For our food.
By Its Invisible Hand
We all are fed,
Give us, Supply and Demand,
Our Daily Bread.
Amen.

The new statement on financial reform from the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace contains a pretty good overview of the current world economic crisis--but other such overviews are readily available. Its advocacy of what Pope John XXIII called "a true world political authority" to deal with the problem long term will be regarded by even the most sympathetic as pie-in-the-sky.

No, the Vatican's strong suit is religion, which is why I am delighted to be able to agree with George Weigel in his pronunciamento: "As for the document itself, no morally alert person objects to bringing discussions of global finance within the ambit of moral reasoning; that is an entirely worthy intention."

Within that ambit, the Council associates itself with Pope John Paul II's concern that, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, the victors would be led to violate the Big Commandment to "have no other gods before me."

In 1991, after the failure of Marxist communism, Blessed John Paul II had already warned of the risk of an "idolatry of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities." Today his warning needs to be heeded without delay and a road must be taken that is in greater harmony with the dignity and transcendent vocation of the person and the human family.

That's the message that the Weigels and the Michael Novaks--to say nothing of non-Catholic conservatives--should take to heart. Of course, like other idolators, the market devotees really believe that they're right; they do not accept the Vatican's contention that the first cause of the economic crisis is "an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls." Believers in a thing unseen, they are impervious to arguments and evidence to the contrary.

Michael Sean Winters has scored a copy of a letter from USCCB president Timothy Dolan to his fellow bishops on the latest disturbing statistics on poverty in the U.S., and MSW can be forgiven for putting the best possible interpretation on it; to wit:

It is heartening to see the USCCB recognize that the Church's stance on poverty is every bit as critical as its stance on other issues. And, it is very encouraging to see Archbishop Dolan writing with such passion about this issue.

Personally, I'd find it more heartening if the good archbishop had focused attention more clearly towards the federal government. Instead of which, we get this:

These economic failures have fundamental institutional and systemic elements that have either been ignored or made worse by political and economic behaviors, which have undermined trust and confidence. However, this is not time to make excuses or place blame. It is a time for everyone to accept their own personal and institutional responsibility to help create jobs and to overcome poverty, each in accord with their own abilities and opportunities. Individuals and families, faith-based and community groups, businesses and labor, government at every level, all must work together and find effective ways to promote the common good in national and economic life.

Whose "political and economic behaviors" is he referring to--his parishioners on Wall Street maybe? And why not place some blame? Mightn't it be a useful exercise to fix a little responsibility here? Then there's:

Our Conference will continue to urge our leaders to assist and protect the poor and jobless as they seek to promote economic growth and fiscal responsibility.

Why not something like: "Assisting and protecting the least among us must be the government's first priority. Declining to do so in the name of fiscal responsibility, as some of our political leaders are doing, is unconscionable." Twenty-five years ago, the American bishops rolled this way. No more.

In his inaugural homily as archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput took it upon himself to riff on the traditional understanding that a bishop is married to his diocese.

Of course, my appointment to Philadelphia is an arranged marriage, and the Holy Father is the matchmaker. The good news is that romance is a modern invention -- and given the divorce rate common today, it's not everything it's cranked up to be. In fact, history suggests that arranged marriages often worked at least as well as those based on romantic love. When arranged marriages were common, there was an expectation that people would get to know each other and then come to love one another. Good matchmakers were aware of the family history of each of the spouses and their particular needs. And the really wise matchmakers could make surprisingly good choices.

The bad news is that the kind of arranged episcopal marriage Chaput has just undergone is also a modern invention. Back in the day, bishops were chosen in a threefold process: 1) election by the diocesan clergy; 2) confirmation by the metropolitan (archbishop); and 3) acclamation by the people. That is to say, the marriage of bishop and diocese was not arranged from above--the pope had no part in the choice--but depended very much on the agreement of the governed, clergy and laity alike. The spouse, in other words, gave her consent. And such a marriage was supposed to last forever, such that when a bishop died, the diocese was said to be "widowed."

Nowadays not so much. The matchmaking pope decides, and the parties have to live with the decision. And divorce is permitted, when the matchmaker decides that the bishop of a lesser diocese has earned the right to ascend to a more exalted see. Put another way, while poor old divorced Denver awaits a more junior consort, Charles Chaput gets to sport his trophy wife all the way to his red hat.