MORE ON THE SHROUD

Science by Press Release? 

An Editorial Response by Barrie Schwortz

October 7, 2009

(Taken from Shroud of Turin Website.)

I was away from my office and in Los Angeles yesterday when the story broke in the media that an Italian professor had "reproduced" the Shroud using techniques that were available in the 14th century. Although I didn't have my computer with me, my mobile phone rang again and again with friends calling to read me the story, so I heard the news almost immediately.

Upon my return late last night, my mailbox was flooded with e-mail, my answering machine was nearly full of messages and more than 20,000 people had visited the website since Tuesday morning. I finally was able to read the story myself at around 1:00 am.

Normally, I don't respond to this type of story, since the media rarely publishes the rebuttals anyway and the stories usually disappear by themselves after only a few days. In the end, giving it any attention at all usually only helps the author of the article and garners even more publicity for him because someone is publicly disagreeing with him. However, since so many viewers have written me, I decided to write this brief response in which I am expressing my own personal opinions on this topic. That is why I titled it an "Editorial" Response.
Frankly, knowing that the Shroud will go on public display again in around 6 months, I am not very surprised to see this type of story coming out, along with its resulting media coverage. This seems to happen every time the Shroud is about to go on public display. Yet whenever a serious scientific article about the Shroud is published in a peer reviewed journal, there is barely a ripple in the popular media. And now, once again, someone claims to have "reproduced" the Shroud, "proving" it is a medieval forgery. They made their claims via nothing more than a press release and got instant global media coverage. However, that is NOT the way science actually operates.

The author who made these claims states that he will make the details available "next week." In the real world of science, a researcher must perform his experiments, compile his data, draw his conclusions, write a formal paper and submit it to a scientific journal for peer review. The work is then examined by other experts, usually of the same discipline, before it is accepted for publication (or rejected). The data must provide a sound basis for the claims and be there from the beginning. Not "next week." And certainly not made public via a press release!

Sadly, in reviewing the article, it is apparent immediately that the author knows very little about the actual Shroud of Turin. He is not the first to suggest that the Shroud image was produced by red ochre pigment (iron oxide). In fact, he is at least the fourth to have proposed this theory in the last 30 years. Of course, this issue was anticipated by the STURP team in 1978 and a number of highly sensitive tests were performed that determined there was not enough iron oxide on the Shroud to be visible without a microscope. Iron oxide does not constitute the image on the Shroud. They also determined the image areas of the Shroud contain no more iron oxide than the non-image areas. It is more or less evenly distributed across the entire cloth.

Obviously, if the image were made in the manner detailed in the article, we would still find thousands of particles of iron oxide embedded into the image fibers of the linen and these would be clearly visible with just a good magnifying glass. Yet the microscopy done directly on the Shroud in 1978 revealed no such thing. These particles just don't go away on their own. STURP's instruments could detect parts per billion (a very small amount) of any substance on the Shroud and ALL known paints and pigments (including iron oxide) were excluded by the data. Interestingly, iron oxide is also a by-product of retting linen and the minute quantities found on the Shroud were pure and most likely the result of the retting process. The iron oxide used in red ochre pigment has many impurities and is rarely if ever found in its pure form.

I have stated on more than one occasion that making images on linen is relatively easy. However, making images on linen with the same chemical and physical properties as the Shroud is another story. Considering the massive amount of scientific data that now exists about the Shroud of Turin, anyone making claims such as these must submit their work for careful scrutiny and comparative analysis before drawing such dramatic conclusions. That has not been done in this case. Anyone making such claims must create an image with ALL the same chemical and physical properties as the Shroud, not just a few, if they wish to be taken seriously.

It has been demonstrated scientifically that the bloodstains on the Shroud came from direct contact with a body and are all forensically accurate. It has also been shown that the bloodstains were on the Shroud BEFORE the image was formed since the blood and serum acted to inhibit the image formation mechanism. There is NO image under the blood and serum stains on the Shroud.

However, to make this new "reproduction," the "blood" was added (using a different pigment) AFTER the image was created. Obviously, it is much easier to add the blood to the image than to first create the blood stains and then create the forensically accurate image around them, which is exactly what a medieval forger would have had to do to duplicate the actual physical properties of the Shroud!
Many of the bloodstains on the Shroud show a surrounding halo of serum stains that are ONLY visible with UV fluorescence photography. Also, the blood has been chemically analyzed and determined to include components of actual blood, NOT pigment.

A proper, detailed scientific response to this press release is now being drafted by the online Shroud Science Group and I hope to publish an in-depth article by true Shroud experts addressing these claims in the near future.

However, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the press release also stated the researcher "received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results." This is an interesting statement from someone representing a segment of the skeptical community that has frequently charged the STURP scientists with religious bias, implying that their data was somehow flawed because some of them happened to be Christians! Until such time that the data is made available so it can be properly examined and compared to the known data about the Shroud, I will not take these claims very seriously. And neither should you.

Barrie Schwortz

7 October 2009

PRESS RELEASE: 

Los Alamos National Laboratory team of scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong

COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the C-14 sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out that “the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.” Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to the theory that the threads were spliced together during a repair. 

 

LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. This hypothesis was presented by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Orvieto, Italy in 2000. Benford and Marino proposed that a 16th Century patch of cotton/linen material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the region ultimately used for dating. The intermixed threads combined to give the dates found by the labs ranging between 1260 and 1390 AD. Benford and Marino contend that this expert repair was necessary to disguise an unauthorized relic taken from the corner of the cloth. A paper presented today at the conference by Benford and Marino, and to be published in the July/August issue of the international journal Chemistry Today, provided additional corroborating evidence for the repair theory. 

OHIO STATE SHROUD CONFERENCE

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

I personally think that change has now to be created by people brave enough to pursue the vision of an inclusive ‘catholic’ church. The Roman Church doesn’t want change. Perhaps if prophetic individuals and groups can show how the Church of God should be, then maybe, just maybe, there may be created a vision of hope.

Contemplative Catholic

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FEAST DAY OF GAY SAINTS OCTOBER 7

Saints Sergius and Bacchus

Another example of synchronicity, yesterday I attended evening Mass at the little church next door to my apartment (see posting below)., not realizing it was the feast day of these two gay saints. Sitting three rows in front of me was a young,  obviously gay couple enjoying their friendship throughout the service and being pleasantly tolerated by the rest of the small community (12 of us altogether, including one little girl skipping about in the sanctuary and a teenager with a skateboard). Both young men were greeted warmly by all during the kiss of peace. Interesting. I must find out more about this sweet little parish next door.

Saints Sergius and Bacchus were Roman soldiers, Christian martyrs and gay men who loved each other. They were killed around 303 in present-day Syria. Their feast day is observed on Oct. 7. The couple was openly gay, but secretly Christian -- the opposite of today’s closeted Christians.

The close bond between the two men has been emphasized since the earliest accounts, and recent scholarship has revealed their homosexuality. The oldest record of their martyrdom describes them as erastai (Greek for “lovers”). Scholars believe that they may have been united in the rite of adelphopoiesis (brother-making), a kind of early Christian same-sex marriage. 

A classic example of paired saints, Sergius and Bacchus were high-ranking young officers. Sergius was primicerius (commander) and Bacchus was secundarius (subaltern officer). They were tortured to death after they refused to attend sacrifices to Zeus, thus revealing their secret Christianity. 

The men were arrested and paraded through the streets in women’s clothing in an unsuccessful effort to humiliate them. Early accounts say that they responded by chanting that they were dressed as brides of Christ. They told their captors that women’s dress never stopped women from worshipping Christ, so it wouldn’t stop them, either. Then Sergius and Bacchus were separated and beaten so severely that Bacchus died. 

According to the early manuscripts, Bacchus appeared to Sergius that night with a face as radiant as an angel’s, dressed once again as a soldier. He urged Sergius not to give up because they would be reunited in heaven as lovers. His statement is unique in the history of martyrs. Usually the promised reward is union with God, not with a lover. Over the next days Sergius was tortured and eventually beheaded. 

Sergius’ tomb became a famous shrine, and for nearly 1,000 years the couple was revered as the official patrons of the Byzantine army. Many early churches were named after Sergius, sometimes with Bacchus. They are recognized as martyrs by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. The pair was venerated through the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Latin America and among the Slavs. Sergius and Bacchus continue to be popular saints with Christian Arabs and now among GLBT Christians and their allies. 

(taken from My Out Spirit)

Christ the Bridegroom

Christ the Bridegroom

Robert Lentz

http://www.trinitystores.com

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THE KISS

Thank you to all for the many kind comments to my previous post, Emmaus Walk.  I hope to find time (and interior calm) to expand on those reflections further this weekend, since there is much more to say. Right now I'm a bit exhausted from dealing with 14 rambunctious, but utterly charming teenagers in a long play practice.

However, on the way home I stopped off at the tiny church next door, St. Aldaberts. This is the first time I've joined this intimate, warm community for services, beginning with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at 6:30, followed by Mass at 7 ( a rarity for me). During the opening section of the mass, a young man in his mid twenties came and sat down in a pew a few rows ahead of me. Right at the beginning of the reading of the epistle, another young man of about the same age, joined the first and kissed him quickly on the mouth, then sat beside him. I thought, hmmmm, is this a Czech custom? The two then proceeded to chatter very amiably all throughout the service, pausing for a moment only during the consecration. They were so filled with joy in each other's company that their enthusiasm and affection spread a warm glow over the rest of us. Clearly no one seemed to mind or care, including the rather sleepy 'friar' on the altar who gazed at the pair for a few moments. When we came to receive communion, I was given a clue. Everyone in the line ahead of me took communion in the hand, an extreme rarity in the Czech Republic, and that's when I realized this was a 'liberal' parish, liberal indeed if two gay men felt confident enough to kiss in public in church. So, thank you Jesus (as my mother used to say with a wink). There are signs of hope, however few and far between.

(At the time I wrote this, I didn't realize it was the feast day of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, openly gay saints.)  

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EMMAUS WALK

 Inspired by a recent posting by Terence Weldon at Queering the Church

As South African experience and others have shown, it is not possible to sustain power  indefinitely without the consent of the governed or ruthless physical force. The hierarchy currently has substantial consent, but no means of physical coercion. We can force them to change, simply by removing our consent and co-operation.

I am reading more and more reports of groups and congregations who are simply regarding the Vatican and its decrees with the Ignatian detachment recommended by James Alison, and starting the Emmaus walk described by Michael B Kelly back to Jerusalem, carrying prophetic witness of the risen Lord to the religious authorities who have forgotten it. Some examples of these are the congregations like that of the Spirit of St Stephen’s, who have responded to diocesan attempts to muzzle them by walking away from their control, or the womenpriests movement, who have responded to Vatican intransigence and refusal to even discuss ordination, by moving ahead alone. There are many others.

(thanks to Terry Weldon)

For twenty two years, I have been journeying on my own personal Emmaus Walk,  celebrating the Eucharist within a small community of gay persons who are disaffected from the Church, and occasionally in solitude on my own (in mystical communion with the whole church), though neither my friends nor myself have been 'officially ordained.' Twenty-two years ago in San Francisco, I underwent a transformative experience late one evening before the crucifix in the sanctuary of the church of Saint Antony of Padua which changed both my whole life and my understanding of priesthood and Eucharist. Because of it's personal nature, I don't feel inclined to describe it in detail at this time. However, my spiritual director at the time, a nun and a professor at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley,  described it as a 'charismatic ordination in the  Spirit'. The experience would not have been complete, however, without the joyful confirmation and celebration of four very close gay Catholic friends. We gathered together to  lay hands upon one another, to break bread together on the Road to Emmaus, and we experienced our own gay Pentecost, our spirits burning with tongues of fire. Four months later, Cardinal Ratzinger issued his now infamous open letter on homosexuality, a clear sign to me that I was to let go of all aspirations for the formal priesthood because I was forced to ask myself- to quote Father Jeff Farrow from his posting today - "At what point do you cease to be an agent for healing and growth and become an accomplice of injustice?” That point was reached for me twenty two years ago and I have never looked back. The Eucharist has been at the center of my spiritual life, though I rarely attend formal celebrations of the Eucharist in Catholic communities (Pope Benedict's recent Mass at Stara Boleslav being one of the rare exceptions, an occasion of great grace for me). My own vocation is to remain on the periphery, just outside the door, ever wandering on the Road to Emmaus, while searching for the lights of Gheel, longing for safe harbor and a church all gay and lesbian people can call home.

Because of the highly personal nature of this disclosure, I prefer to limit my comments for today, except to say that besides discussing this with my spiritual director, I also discussed it with two Jesuit theologians, one of whom responded by taking out of his desk the accouterments  for the liturgy and celebrating the Eucharist with me. It has been a joyful, painful, mysterious journey of twenty-two years since that moment and there have been many developments and many graces. The full significance of this sense of 'calling' is still unclear to me and it would not be appropriate to ask for understanding or acceptance of a path that is seemingly so 'heterodox'  where the sacred mystery of the Eucharist is concerned. I continue to journey in faith, confident in the Risen Lord that the way will become clear.

Saint Anthony, the patron of lost causes, holding the light as he peers over the abyss.

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SAINT DYMPHNA AND THE LIGHTS OF GHEEL

St. Dymphna seeking refuge from the storm.

This poignant painting of the seventh century Irish maiden, Saint Dymphna, reminds me of all of us Gay and Lesbian persons who are struggling in these dark times to keep the light of faith alive in an unjust church. The lights of Gheel are just behind us, a safe haven, a place where we can find help and protection. We just have to see it, to cross the distance without giving up hope. 

(paraphrased from the artist's website)

Jenny's Desser Drawer

St. Dymphna, who was beheaded by her father for refusing his sexual advances, is the patron saint of the mentally ill and incest victims, though by rights she should also be the patron of all victims of sexual abuse. Today, the village of Gheel in Belgium is entirely dedicated to the care of the mentally ill.

Colleen Kochivar-Baker has offered this clarification:

Gheel is actually outside Antwerp in Belgium and has been a haven for the mentally ill for over 1000 years. At times 1/4 of the population of this city of twenty thousand will be mentally ill, and they come-frequently alone and on foot-from all over Europe.

The therapeutic protocals they have developed are studied by mental health professionals from all over the world. What makes Gheel successful is that the entire community is accepting and in many cases makes their living from the humane treatment of the mentally ill. It is a unique and virtually unrepeatable therapeutic paradigm. I've often wished I've had the resources to send clients to Gheel rather than a stateside psychiatrist.

Gheel Belgium is a truly miraculous and incredible, if virtually unknown story. Thanks for bringing some more attention to this really incredible story.

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CHRIST THE KING

I couldn't resist posting this with a twinkle, though no disrespect is intended.

Sometimes Catholic kitsch can be quite moving.

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SAINT FRANCIS

http://jenwojtowicz.blogspot.com/ 

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ANDREW HARVEY ON SACRED ACTIVISM

I have a great admiration for all those who stand up for the craziness of the world. I have a great admiration for all those who realize that we are on a suicidal death trip and want to reverse as quickly and as urgently as possible all the various addictions and undo all the various systems of evil that are destroying human beings and nature.  But I have come through my own experience to understand that both mystics and activists, as they are now, have serious and limiting shadows.  

 

The mystic shadow is an addiction to transcendence, an addiction to the light—a forgetting of the responsibilities of mystic consciousness to compassion and justice, and to cherishing and sustaining the real world.  So many mystics, especially in the new age, use their mystical experiences as a kind of “subtle heroin” to sign-off from responsibility to the burning world and justify their obscene passivity and addiction to bliss experiences as great wisdom, which is great blindness.  

Many of the activists I know, and I admire their nobility and their fierceness and their commitment, are also in their own narcissism and shadow. This narcissism and shadow expresses itself as a divided consciousness which is very often rooted in anger but projects the unacknowledged shadow of the activist himself or herself onto the demonic other, and that leads very often to messiah complexes, great outrage, offending others by brutal condemnation of them, and tragically, despair and burnout, in the face of the very exhausting task of transforming the world so hell-bent on destruction.

So what I’ve come to understand is that this narcissism and these shadows that afflict both the activist and the mystic can only really be healed when the fire of the mystic’s passion for God is united with the fire of the activist’s passion for justice to form a third fire, which is Divine love and wisdom in action. 

And when this third fire is ignited, the shadow of the mystic is healed by the passion of the activist for justice. And the mystics’ temptation to passivity and the mystics’ temptation to go off into the light and forget the responsibilities of the world and not to put love into action are healed by the activists’ passion for just action. And the activists shadow of divisiveness, of burnout, messiah complexes etc is healed by the mystical wisdom and peace and deep, deep union with the Divine and deep union with the sources of strength the Divine can provide.  

So this third fire breeds a new kind of activism.  It breeds an activism that flows naturally and profoundly, and wisely, from deep sacred consciousness, deep alignment with the beloved, deep surrender to the will of the beloved, and deep opening on every level of the being, (heart, soul, mind, and body) to the light and truths of the Divine and to it’s mysterious will of transformation in reality.  

taken from MyOutSpirit 

THE ULTIMATE SACRED ACTIVIST

CHAGALL: WHITE CRUCIFIXION

"Following the September 1935 laws to curtail the civil rights of Jews, the Nazis in 1938 took a Jewish census and registered all Jewish businesses as preliminaries to plans for ethnic genocide. In June and August of that year the synagogues in Munich and Nuremberg were destroyed, and on November 9, the so-called Crystal Night, these anti-semitic atrocities reached a climax. In reaction, Chagall conceived a painting of the martyrdom of the Jew Jesus as a universal symbol for religious persecution. Instead of a crown of thorns, the Jesus on Chagall's picture wears a head-cloth and a prayershawl around his loins. The round halo around his head is repeated by the round glow around the Menorah at his feet. Mourning his persecution, figures of the Hebrew patriarchs and the matriarch Rachel appear in the smoke-filled nighttime sky. All around the cross, Chagall has depicted a bleak snowscape with horrific scenes of modern Germany. In the background to the right, a soldier opens the doors of a flaming Torah ark removed from a pillaged synagogue, the contents of which litter the foreground. Both the flag above the synagogue and the soldier's armband originally were decorated with inverted swastikas. One of the fleeing figures in the foreground at the left wears a sign which originally bore the inscription "Ich bin Jude" ('I am a Jew'). In the background above is a ship full of refugees trying ineffectively to flee a burning village, destroyed before the arrival of a liberating People's Army from the Soviet Union carrying red flags; this last detail was wishful thinking, motivated by the antagonism of Stalin's government toward Hitler's before 1939. Included in an exhibition of Chagall's works in Paris in early 1940, the ""White Crucifixion" was designed to raise awareness of the events in Hitler's Germany and their implications for mankind in general. "

taken from: The Amica Library

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STARA BOLESLAV: CHURCH OF THE ASSUMPTION

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More Centrist Denial of Sex Abuse in the RCC

I am on retreat at the moment at Stara Boleslav, without the crowds and without the Pope, but still with my laptop computer. As the content of the following post is part of my meditations on church at Stara Boleslav (because of the approximately 500 altar boys at the Pope's Mass last Monday) here it is.

(As a supplement to this rant of mine below, might I refer the reader to the wise and compassionate words of Andrew Hamilton on the Polanski affair and the  abuse crisis in the RCC at
Eureka Street.Com.)

Since I posted earlier today about the sex abuse crisis in reference to powerful exposes by William Lindsey on his blog Bilgrimage, I then came across this disturbing passage at the 'centrist' Catholic blog, Vox Nova, in a posting commenting on the recent arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland.

As for the priestly comparisons, I think we should all take a step back. I have not been sympathetic to the priestly abuse witch hunts over the past two decades. Having said that, there is such a degree of moral difference between knowingly moving a priest through several parishes and enabling him to accrue ever more victims and honoring a man that made a despicable choice three decades ago for his film making. The difference is a few orders of magnitude. The evidence is certainly not exculpatory that systematic abuse of minors was aided and condoned by high levels of some dioceses. While much of the ‘abuse’ was consensual and between late to mid teenage boys, there was also abuse that was clearly felonious. There is also strong evidence for the cover up of that abuse. 

While this is not an extreme version of the 'denial' I was referring to in an earlier posting, since at least the abuse and cover-up are both admitted, it does constitute a classic example of the mitigation of horror. What disturbs me about this passage is the attempt to mitigate the nature of the abuse and temper the sense of moral outrage through an adroit use of  tone and vocabulary, and the assertion that "much of the 'abuse' was consensual and between late to mid teenage boys." 

The evidence is certainly not exculpatory is a rather polite way of avoiding the fact that the evidence is overwhelmingly inculpatory, offering clear evidence of guilt. Clearly felonious is also a polite way of admitting that the law was broken, but the clinical, legal term removes most of the moral outrage that we should feel from the testimony of victims whose lives have been irrevocably damaged. It is a very subtle, clever manipulation of language designed to reduce the impact of the admission. Well, yes, it happened,  in some cases, here and there, but...it's not really too too serious so let's not get too too excited about it. The most disturbing tactic, however, is placing the phrase "much of the 'abuse' was consensual and between late to mid teenage boys," at the beginning of the sentence, thereby implying that 'most' of the abuse was consensual, and while not ethical, was also not really that serious in terms of psychological damage. Excuse me? How many cases on record involve 'consensual' sex? Next to none, to my knowledge, because why would such individuals come forward to protest and seek redress. The overwhelming number of charges of sex abuse have been made by individuals who claim they were coerced, manipulated, forced into unwilling sexual relations with priests, if not actually raped, with lasting traumatic damage. Nor is it just in 'some dioceses.' As Tom Doyle has so eloquently testified, the abuse and its cover-up are systemic worldwide, it is found just about everywhere in nearly every diocese in the Roman Catholic Church. Priestly abuse witch hunts is another manipulative phrase, without denying that some genuine injustice has been done to innocent priests. In context, however, it implies that most of the energy devoted to exposing the true nature of the crisis has been of an hysterical nature, and misplaces most of the weight of indignation upon the accusers. This is the primary defense mechanism of the two present and  previous Popes. It is all part of a devious plan to attack the good name of the church.

But to return to the issue of 'consensual sex' between adult male priests and mid to late teenage boys, (and girls)  no doubt there are many such cases in existence, but these cases constitute another hidden dimension to the whole abuse crisis because we are simply not hearing about them. Add them to the equation and who can say how high the percentages will soar of priests involved in abusive sexual situations (and violating their vows of celibacy). The abuse may not equal the trauma of coercive sex, but speaking as a teacher of young adolescents, it is still abusive for an adult in a position of moral leadership of his community to involve an adolescent in a complex, deceitful relationship that violates the express moral norms of that community. Even eighteen to twenty year olds are not yet capable emotionally of dealing with the subtleties of such an ethically compromised situation. It induces cynicism in the young and Lord knows they are cynical enough as it is about church leaders and their trustworthiness. Therefore there is no need for the quotation marks put around the word 'abuse.' If your 'thing' is for late adolescent or young  adult males or females, then you had better get out of the priesthood fast or any position of leadership or responsibility for the young.

At the risk of being repetitious, I come back to the main point. Employing a phrase such as, 'Much of the 'abuse' was consensual and between late to mid teenage boys' is a classic example of denial. It testifies to an inability to detach oneself from a certain image of the unsullied Church and to face facts head on and deal with them in an honest manner.

As Colleen Kochivar-Baker has put it most eloquently, in reference to the testimony of Tom Doyle,

Catholicism would be well served if more clergy would voice their true horror at what is and has been done to the People of God in order to protect the prestige and power of the clerical priesthood.

Enlightened Catholicism

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PEACE AND NONVIOLENCE FROM VIETNAM

 BAT NHA MONASTERY IS DESTROYED

The Vietnamese government and the Religious Committee have won. Their victory is that Bat Nha is completely destroyed. Everything is smashed. All the monks and nuns have been evicted from the monastery and the buildings have been stripped bare.

Our monastics brothers and sisters have done their part, that is they have responded faithfully to every challenge with non-violence, compassion and forgiveness. And yes, they have won.

Now we rest on the conscience of the government and of the people, inside and outside of Vietnam.

We do not blame anyone. We have no anger toward anyone. We know that our enemies are not people; they are greed, hatred and ignorance.

Bat Nha monastery was Vietnam’s fastest-growing and most radical monastery – and the one most popular among Vietnamese youth. All but a handful of the hundreds of monks and nuns ordained in the last three years are aged 15-25. Bat Nha was famed for its monthly mindfulness days, which regularly attracted crowds of 800 people, with bus-loads traveling up to 400 km from the big cities of Saigon, Da Nang and Nha Trang. This high-mountain monastery, renowned for its natural beauty, waterfalls and forests, came to popular fame when it was featured as a modern spiritual sanctuary for the young heroine of the national Stepfather television soap.

Over 350 young Bat Nha monks and nuns are currently at Chùa Phước Huệ temple in Bảo Lộc, Vietnam. This is where they have been given temporary sanctuary after their violent eviction from Bat Nha on Sunday 27th. The situation is very difficult. The temple is normally only for 5 monks; there are now 400 of them in that space, in dire sanitary conditions. The police have surrounded the temple and threatening more violence. The aim of the police is to break up the monastic sangha, at all costs. But the monks and nuns assert their right to stay together, as a sangha. Without a sangha we are alone and vulnerable, like a tiger that has left the mountain.

If you wish to send a message of support directly to the monks and nuns, it may be very encouraging for them to read in this difficult and challenging moment. They need to know that we are all here for them.

Send messages to: we.are.all.here.for.you[at]gmail.com

Taken from Plum Village website.

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The 3 Wise Monkeys, Sexual Abuse and the Prada Red Shoes

This is the famous 17th century carving over the door of the renowned Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Japan, which gave birth to the famous maxim: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.  As Wikipedia remarks, "In the western world the phrase is often used to refer to those who deal with impropriety by looking the other way, refusing to acknowledge it, or feigning ignorance."

I was reminded of this phrase while reading a series of brilliant articles on the sexual abuse crisis  in the Catholic Church, written and posted by William Lindsey at his blog, Bilgrimage. In my opinion, these penetrating, truthful exposes belong on the front page of the New York Times. In a powerful section of his most recent post, William remarks:

For me, one of the biggest scandals at this point in the history of the Catholic church is the refusal of my brothers and sisters of the center even to discuss the abuse crisis—openly, honestly, and above all, as a theological datum without which it is impossible to talk about anything meaningful at any theological level today, whether the anything is ecclesiology, soteriology, ecumenism, theodicy, and so forth. It is scandalous enough that my brothers and sisters of the center can respond to the pained voices of their gay brothers and sisters as though our voices mean nothing and come from nowhere—and have no import at all for any of those important theological discussions.

But it is even more scandalous that my brothers and sisters of the center can, for almost a decade now, have heard (or at least had the opportunity to hear) one anguished voice after another of adult survivors of clerical sexual abuse, and can go on talking about the church and its future and mission in the world as if those voices have simply not spoken. As if they are not there. As if they do not count and as if what they say does not matter. Not at the center.

As if they have not completely interrupted the comfortable discussions of the center. As if they have not and should not make talk about God, love, salvation, communion, etc., well-nigh impossible for Catholics today. As if they do not make being Catholic well-nigh impossible today.

This final statement resonates so powerfully - "As if they do not make being Catholic well-nigh impossible today." If you have absorbed the full horror and implications of the sexual abuse crisis into your being (which can really only be done through prayer and contemplation), then nothing the hierarchy has to say on any subject at this point in history has any credibility. They have lost their credibility completely and we should not be listening to them until they have acknowledged the full scale of the sexual abuse crisis, recognized and publicly confessed their own scandalous culpability, revealed the full extent of the cover up and their continuing abuse of those victims who dare to speak up  and made appropriate penance and restitution. Wearing sackcloth and ashes for ten years and carrying a sign that says "I am a sexual abuse enabler" for twenty years would not even come close to an appropriate form of purification for the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead we get this:

Catholic culture at this moment, especially in the United States, is in a profound state of psychological denial and the pathology runs deep, very deep. As William Lindsey has pointed out in substantive detail here, (and by Terence Weldon at Queering the Church) the Hierarchy's present strategy is to blame others, gay men in the ministry in particular, for the current crisis instead of seeing the crisis for what it is, an evil in the Church that has been spawned by the abuse of hierarchical power. We need to use this theologically resonant term more often until the full force of the word is felt in the depths of the psyche and the soul. What the hierarchy has done (in collusion with the perpetrators) and is continuing to do regarding the sexual abuse crisis is an evil act committed upon the victims themselves and upon the whole  body of the community called Church. More than simple penance and restitution is called for. The crisis will not go away until the Catholic faithful themselves remove the blinders, recognize the full extent of this destructive pathology, and call for a thorough reformation of the governing structure of the Church. Until such a thorough reformation is undertaken, and firm structures of accountability put in place, we will simply continue to have more victims and the body of the Church will remain in a state of putrefaction.

FUTURE VICTIMS

(Photos taken with a heartbreaking sense of tragic irony at Stara Boleslav, sight of Pope Benedict's recent Mass in the Czech Republic)



And the hierarchy's and Centrist Catholics' response:

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Juan Pablo I - Materia Reservada (3/4)

A 2008 interview (in Spanish) with Father Jesús López Sáez, who is now the leading spokesperson for those of us who wish to see justice done in the matter of the death of Pope John Paul I. If you speak Spanish, the four part interview is chilling. If you do not speak Spanish, you can at least get a sense of the integrity and psychological balance of the man. This is a case that simply won't go away, despite the attempts of many in the Vatican bureaucracy to silence and censor this courageous Spanish priest.

Cardinals Pironio and  Aloísio Lorscheider both supported him, as well as the courageous bishop of the Matto Grosso, Brazil, Pedro Casaldaliga.

http://www.comayala.es/

"I know why he died. He has known evil in the Church.”

Girolamo Bortignon, former Bishop of Belluno, and personal friend of Albino Luciani

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Another Way of Being Church

Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga Plá
Another way of being Church

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Pedro Casaldáliga, Bishop Emeritus of São Félix do Araguaia in Brazil, speaks of the fears within the Church today and of the search for a new way of "Being Church". Nominated by the  Bishops of Spain for the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, Bishop Casadaliga is internationally renowned for his commitment to nonviolence and his uncompromising defense of the poor and the oppressed.

 (All your material is important for History and for the purification of the Church.) 

Endorsement by Bishop Casaldaliga of Jesus Lopez Saez's book on the death of Pope JPI,

There will be a Reckoning

(See posting below)

From the beginning it is important to state that we are not talking about "another Church, but another way of Being Church" with the good will of being the Church of Jesus Christ without pride or belittling others. It is possible and necessary to be the Church of Jesus, but in a different way.

Throughout history, the Church of Jesus has taken on different forms and there have always been different ways of being church within it. Today, we are experiencing great insecurity and fear simultaneously in the Church, and in the Churches in general. The great German theologian, Rahner, spoke years ago about the "winter" of the Church. And for years we have been talking about "involution". The word has even made its way into public use, with journalists talking about involution in the Church.

There is insecurity and fear, but on the other hand there are also demands which are growing more explicit and even collective, and becoming experiences of liberation. There has never been so much diversity in the Church of Jesus as today, particularly in terms of the laity. This is true not only in Latin America, but also in Europe. The base communities are an alternative experience of Being Church compared to the traditional parish model, for example.

The Church's many fears

In Nicaragua, a magazine published a special issue dedicated to the Church today. The title of the special issue was: "Why we believe in the Church". In this issue there was an article written by Rev. Victor Codina, a Jesuit working in Bolivia. He describes the Church's fears, he offers a litany of fears, which I am going to describe with brief comments.

- There is still fear of Marxism, which has not been overcome despite the collapse of real socialism.

- There is fear of the modern secular world that has pushed the Church out of the public sphere, relegating it to the private sphere.

- There is fear of ecumenical dialogue, which has cooled off in recent years. The Churches have withdrawn to defend and protect their own identities.

- There is fear of inter­religious dialogue, the proliferation of all kinds of religious expressions world-wide, which is macro­ecumenism as we stated in the First Assembly of the People of God in Quito in 1992 to mark the 500^th anniversary of Latin America.

- There is fear of Episcopal collegiality and the resurgence of local churches. You know that there are certain Bishops who frequently have problems with the centre because of Episcopal collegiality and the resurgence of local churches. Centralism exists in the Church and we need to recognise it. The Church is a port on the one hand, and landlocked on the other.

- There is fear of the laity, that they have a public opinion of the Church and its political and social commitments. Despite all the talk about the protagonism of the laity, when lay people express their commitment we either leave them alone or, on some occasions, condemn them.

- There is fear of women, which is one of the greatest fears, and their contribution in decision­making, although this right is defended. If women can and should be equal to men in society, why not in the Church?

- There is fear of theologians. There have been many books written by theologians that have not been published and will not be published because they might be censored. I personally know of several cases.

- There is fear of cultures. This happens because of inter­religious dialogue because evidently dialogue between cultures means dialogue between religions.

- There is fear of young people, although there are efforts to attract them, because youth is youth. It is critical, noisy and free. Its loud volume is troubling.

- There is fear of Latin American Liberation Theology. You know that during his Visit to Central America a journalist asked Pope John Paul II if liberation theology had ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Pope said that liberation theology was no longer a problem. I believe, with due respect, that it never was a problem. For us, it was of great importance, a relevant solution and it continues to be. But there continues to be a certain level of fear of liberation theology, of less traditional theologies, and also of Asian and African theology.

- There is fear of base communities and an effort to get them back into the parish.

- There is fear of religious life inserted in the community, that is involved on the margins. In Santo Domingo and with good faith - but who knows if there were some Bishops with other intentions - religious men and women were asked to return to the classroom. I think education is important, but without abandoning work on the margins.

- There is fear of sects, to such an extent that we begin to call everything a sect. Evangelical churches are "sects", everything is a sect.

- There is fear of reviewing things like the ordained ministry, optional celibacy, lay ministries, to say nothing about women's ordination.

- There is fear of liturgical changes and bad experiences.

Demands and new freedom in the Church

Along side the fears I am also going to summarise the demands. There is a document circulating in Europe that has been signed by millions of Christians. It is called: "We are the Church". It began in Austria and it asks for: the construction of a fraternal Church with full equality for women's rights; free choice between celibacy and not being celibate; and valuing sexuality as an important part of the human being created and accepted by God. It calls on the Church to adopt a message that is happier, full of hope and even tenderness, instead of its message of control, restriction and threats.

This is what the people who have signed this document want. I know that Bishops in Europe who are not considered revolutionaries think this document is acceptable and sensible, that it deserves attention and that the large number of signatures indicate that it is a collective demand. Maybe what the people who have signed it are saying in a loud voice, is what millions more in the Church of God are saying quietly. So, there is fear and concern on the one hand, and demands and freedom on the other. I think that we are living through an important time in the Church, and the process can only accelerate. The Church will become increasingly less hierarchical. There will continue to be a hierarchy, but it will be less hierarchical. The laity will have greater protagonism.

We will be more communitarian. When we talk about base Christian communities we say that what is most important is not the community or the many communities but the spirit of community. At times when democracy in the Church is discussed I say: I do not want democracy in the Church, I want much more. Democracy is not enough, especially the formal type of democracy we are accustomed to. We want a fraternal community with the full participation of all people, each person with his or her service or ministry but with total participation.

I believe that in the Church, as well as in the grassroots movement, we have moved forward even if it does not always look that way. There is involution at the upper echelons, but there is evolution at the grassroots level. There is much more participation in both the Church and the grassroots movement. Those who have lived in Latin America in the past 25 years can perceive this very clearly.

It seems to me that when we talk about the Church, about our own problems and anxieties, and take on the challenges that correspond to us as church, we need to categorically affirm that we are "church" just as much as anyone else, including the Pope. We are more or less church if we are more or less followers of Jesus. The Pope is as much church as any other baptised Christian. The Pope has a ministry, which is singular and indispensable, but as church. We are church from Baptism, all else is ministry and service. We need to affirm this categorically, live it and give thanks for it.

We are church. In the Church we are the inheritors of those witnesses, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us. And we are going to leave an inheritance to others. This awareness of Being Church should fill us with gratitude, responsibility and freedom of spirit which should enable us to live it with greater awareness, freedom and reality.

The Church: mystery, history, sacrament of salvation

We need to highlight three dimensions of the Church:

- One dimension is that of mystery. The Church is a mystery of faith and we can confess that, "I believe in the Holy Church". It is a mystery of faith: the Church is the bride of the lamb, it is the Body of Christ.

- In the second place the Church is an institution and history. As such, like many institutions in human history, from the beginning of time, and today and tomorrow, the Church is, was and will always be holy and at the same time a sinner. Or as the first Christians said graphically, "chaste and a prostitute". The reformers throughout time have been good for the Church because they shook it and reminded it that it had to change with the times.

Then, as a institution and as history, we can criticise the Church, recognise the nonsense it has created, creates and will create. We are all church, the hierarchy, the grassroots ... Of course, the nonsense of the hierarchy is more evident because we are at the top and because until now the Church has depended directly on us, the hierarchy. And this we need to humbly recognise. I believe that we should not be afraid to ask forgiveness for our omissions and even our crimes: slavery, the crusades, the conquest of America. We always begin the Eucharist asking for forgiveness. A good act of penance is always opportune. It is a good way of recovering credibility.

- Finally, we cannot forget that this Church that is steeped in mystery, that is institution and history, is the sacrament of universal salvation. The universal is the kingdom and the Church is a sacrament of the universal kingdom, universal salvation. A sacrament, a mystery.

- Who knows if theologically and pastorally the correction that we must make in the Church is this: think, insist in the ministry of the entire Church on the service of the Kingdom. The ministry of the Kingdom is the great ministry of the Church and all other ministries are secondary to this. And in the ministry of the Kingdom we are all ministers. A priesthood common to all the faithful. This means, above all, a priesthood that celebrates, announces and waits for the Kingdom. And we all feel committed. We no longer talk about the Church as institution, we talk about ourselves and others and that each of us assumes his or her responsibility. This will open spaces where they are still lacking because this is their right through Baptism.

Another Way of Being Church

A new God, a new church, a renewed option for the poor

I joke at times that when we arrive at the threshold of heaven the first thing we will realise is that from the threshold on in and for all eternity we will never again talk about religion or church. There we will talk about the Kingdom and those of us who were church and those who were religious and even those who were not - we are all the children of God - will be part of the family of God and live the fullness of God's Kingdom. So it would be good if we started here because perhaps we are poorly trained and we will start discussing theology until the Holy Spirit gives us peace.

We, Christians, must emphasise that our great paradigm will continue to be the same paradigm held by Jesus: The Kingdom. This is the paradigm.

In this great paradigm we can and must insist on Being Church in a more or less new way, to become this church that we dream about and believe in with humility but also with freedom and joy. This is the church that Jesus dreamed about. Finally, we can highlight three paradigms, or three sub paradigms:

- We need to begin with a new theological approach. Do not be scared. I have changed my God and I will always be changing my God. Thank God for that. Thanks to the one and only God, I continue changing my God a little each day. And when we reach heaven the first thing we will do is completely change our God. Only then will we see how God sees us. And we will see that God is something else. It will cause a glorious scare, a great happiness. This is what the ancients called the "beatic vision".

- A new approach to theology could lead to a new ecclesiology. A Church that is more communitarian, serving, dialogue­based, inserted in history and in reality with the poor, thirsty, concerned and hopeful, as the Council asked us to be in Gaudium et Spes.

- A renewed option for the poor, who today are excluded, from their full liberation. The worst thing that we could do, the greatest heresy we could commit in our Latin America, in the Third World, is to think that the option for the poor is no longer important. There are many people who in their own interests or because they have gone astray think that "they have talked enough about this option for the poor". At times friends or journalists have asked me what remains of the option for the poor. And I say, "the poor are still with us, as is the God of the poor".

I think that as long as the God of the Poor, who is the God of Jesus, exists and we want to believe, and as long as there are women and men who love and serve this God as Jesus did, then the option for the poor will continue. Furthermore, liberation theology will continue as long as there are minds that think about God and the poor. Unfortunately, as Jesus warned us, "the poor will always be among us". What he did not say is that there would always be increasingly more poor people. This is what neo-liberalism tells us as it washes its hands like Pilot did.

"Another way of Being Church", with simplicity but also happiness, liberty of spirit, must mean being the Church of Jesus. A way of being evangelical, incarnate and placed within history. Being Church is what we want. We do not want anything else, we do not think about a parallel church in the pejorative sense of the word. We must be church and this depends on us.

Ref. LADOC,

Vol. XXVII, July/August 1997.

[This article was published in two parts in Crie (Mexico) No. 351 and 352, March and April 1997].

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

The ministers of God who do not denounce the evils of the Church are bad pastors.  They do not have a dog, the dog of their conscience, or it would bark at them.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENNA

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LEST WE FORGET

(I've corrected the link to Jesús López Sáez's There Will Be a Reckoning)


This takes a while to load, but it is utterly moving and heartbreaking in so many ways.

I've posted it only for the first 3 minutes of Luciani's last audience, which  reveal a holy man of great compassion who was imbued with a deep melancholy and profound humility during his last hours. After that, the video recounts the now official Vatican version of his death, which I don't believe is trustworthy, and that distrust includes the testimony of his secretary, Father Diego Lorenzi, who was most likely doing his best here (under who knows what pressure) to present an acceptable account that protects the image of the Church, but who comes across to this drama teacher as quite nervous and deceptive. Every time I have prayed at the tomb of Pope John Paul I in  St. Peter's, I have always come away with the deep interior sense that there was something 'terribly wrong' about his death. What has always astonished me about this spiritual intuition is the profound sense of peace that has always accompanied it. A natural death brought on by exhaustion, heartache and stress is a perfectly plausible scenario, made even more plausible if it was precipitated by a heated discussion with Cardinal Vilot before retiring.  Nonetheless,  for thirty years I have lived with the deep, interior sense that Luciani's death was not at all a natural one, and this intuition feels like both a gift and a burden. There is nothing I can do to remove it.  I have read all of the convoluted conspiracy theories (including the best of the lot, Spanish priest, Jesús López Sáez's There Will Be a Reckoning) and the best of the rebuttals (On Pilgrimage), yet the intuition in prayer before the Sacrament remains that Pope John Paul I died a martyr to reform of the Church.  If  have one clear conviction concerning the 'facts' in this tragic affair, it is that those closest to Luciani, including Cardinal Vilot,  Monsignor Magee and Father Lorenzi, themselves suspected the possibility of foul play and did their utmost to counter this suspicion with a plausible alternative scenario. However, it's not my wish to get embroiled in conspiracy theories on this blog. I would simply refer the interested viewer to the interview given by Luciani's personal physician,  Dr. Antonio Da Ross, to Il Giornale, September 27, 2003.

"The suspicion remains in our heart like a bitter shade, like a question that has not been given an  answer"

Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider

The testimony of Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, is a shining light of our time that is to be placed on a candlestick, not under a kettle, although that light may reveal the chips and cracks of the house. Everything that, at the time of his death, was intended to be buried with his body is showing up in different ways before the conscience of the Church and the world. God speaks in many ways. If justice is not redressed to John Paul I, we believe there will be a reckoning.

Jesús López Sáez

All your material is important for History and for the purification of the Church.

Endorsement of Jesus Lopez Saez by Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga of Sao Felix,  Matto Grosso, Brazil

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