Tom McMahon today writes from within one of the dioceses that has been at the centre of the firestorm of public opinion engulfing Catholicism in recent weeks. The legacy of these two leaders who have endeavoured to roll back the wisdom discerned by the majority of the world's bishops assembled at the Second Vatican Council looks more and more tattered each day...

What is going on? An International Whirlpool of Religious Chaos…

The opinion page of the San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday April 13, 2010, offers a staff editorial CATHOLICS MUST LIFT VOICES ON SEX ABUSE.

On April 10, 2010 the bold headlines read POPE DELAYED DEFROCKING.

On April 16 Chip Johnson of the S.F. Chronicle writes CHURCH MUST ADDRESS SCANDAL TO MOVE ON and in the World section an article by Rachael Donadio of the N.Y. Times is titled POPE URGES CHRISTIANS TO 'RERPENT' FOR 'OUR SINS' IN SCANDAL.

The Bay Area News Group offers ACCUSED CATHOLIC PRIESTS SHUFFLED AROUND THE GLOBE and right below VATICAN OFFICIAL LINKS HOMOSEXUALITY TO PEDOPHILIA.

These headlines and articles are flashed around the world in moments. Is this front page material read and understood by ordinary people? What do ordinary people do with the information? Later I add in here the death notice of a California bishop whom I knew well. It offers incriminating evidence.

I sense by now that Joe and Mary Pew-Catholic are fairly confused. I suspect they prefer to turn on Jeopardy and forget the whole clerical shebang. I am a professional therapist, alert to the abuse world for over 30 years and I am baffled by out-of-the-blue hostile demands while trying to make some sense out of the Vatican spin talk. What's it all about Alfie? … Let's not stop here. I have some ideas that I have been working on in these sexual matters for years.

First some information about how this is connected to the local San Francisco Bay Area. Like a poison gas these news reports come right inside my home and I find them on my breakfast table. Long ago I devised a strategy to stay sane as the momentum of this tragedy heightened. If you come along with me be prepared to go underground like on Alice in Wonderland' wild toad ride; there is more to this story than chasing a run off ball, mad hatters and wild rabbits.

A stick of dynamite goes off locally...

The "Pope delays..." article opens with

"A former East Bay priest with a long record of sexually abusing children remained in the clergy for years while then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict the XVI, bucked pleas from the Oakland Diocese to defrock him in the 1980's according to an Associated Press report citing church documents".

I was able to read some of the letter written in Latin as it was displayed on our TV screen. I also saw clearly the signature of Joseph Ratzinger.

Retired Oakland Bishop John Cummins

Retired Bishop John Cummins had written to Rome to reduce Stephen Kiesle to the lay state only to be stalled by Ratzinger as he kept Kiesle in the clergy "for the good of the universal church". Tom McMahon here has written about keeping a priest on board so as to say Mass, the cash cow of the roman church. Tom's position is that the present day diocese with outreach parishes is the continuation of the feudal plantation system of the Middle Ages. (Read Ken Follett's WORLD WITHOUT END and PILLARS OF THE EARTH). The local priest is the caretaker of souls and manages the finances of the local parish, a percentage of which finds is way directly to the support of the Vatican. There is a long standing tradition in the Catholic Church that its sacraments give God's grace automatically, regardless of the minister and his spiritual status. (By the way I was in seminary with John Cummins from 1942 to his ordination in 1953 and skied with Johnny for 30 years. He is tops and was a fine church leader. Oakland was out front in addressing the clerical scandal.

The Catholic Roman institutional Church is a vast worldwide corporation — a business with local CEO's called bishops and the top CEO is called the Pope. The combination of laity and clergy is called the Church. One of this corporation's main products is religion, basically centered around obligatory attendance at Sunday mass and a tightly-controlled clerical sacramental system that permeates the human life of its members. The laity are poorly educated; the same can be said of most of the clergy, including bishops. A study of the Middle Ages, 800's to 1600's, offers evidence of the union of king and pope in control of the peoples' lives during this period in which there is no middle class. Up until the 1960's fear of God, sin, and eternal punishment were the key buttons that were pushed to get the people to tow the line of strict obedience to clerical control. I suspect that education of the masses played a huge role in the people thinking outside the clerical box, the birth control encyclical of Paul the 6th being a boomerang that crippled the old confidence the people had in the clergy. Mayhem followed and the old confessional system fell victim to education. The Vatican last played its ace card in "sinful" matters only to realize (or have they yet?) that the people saw a wasted joker. They are preaching to the tides at ocean front. It used to be "Rome has spoken, case closed" … and today: "Rome who?" Is anyone listening to Rome? Yet the bishops claim to be faith teachers. We will examine Hans Küng's open letter to world's Catholic bishops next week.

The local bishop of the rather small diocese of Oakland had written to Rome to safeguard the people, especially children and Rome took four years to respond … the signature on the denial of Bishop Cummins' request was signed by the Joseph Ratzinger, a micro-manager who also did the same when he was bishop of Munich. I recently received a post with the following message. "A pastor-friend of mine said his bishop sent an e-mail to the clergy suggesting that the church is being persecuted from without." His reply: "No we aren't. We're being scandalized from within." Peter, the Apostle and supposed first pope, when confused asked Jesus: "quo vadis, Domine?" (which translates: "To where do we go, master".) I am sure that the master teacher, Luke's Emmaus guide to early confused Christians, would call the people to sit down and talk "about all these things that are happening outside Jerusalem" while having time to eat a bite with his followers (cf. Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24).

Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset

Monastic control of education began to unravel with the labor strike of the wool combers of Florence (not yet Italy) in 1394 c.e.. That was virtually the seed beginning of the peoples' republic form of government and flowering thereafter into the great university systems of Europe and England as the demand for education was brought about by the need in secular language for trade contracts. Mathematics was from the Muslim world and avoided by the monastery but the want for profit by-passed the religious prohibitions. The discovery of the so called New World was backed by mercantile companies whose charters were not written by monks or in Latin. The secular world exploded and the Vatican-church hunkered down and sulked in the back waters of Rome. In the centuries that follow American and French revolutions as well as Oxford and Louvain will seed the formation of the REVOLT OF THE MASSES (by José Ortega y Gasset, 1939), an organized people as newcomer threatens the structure of the Roman religion, the peoples' voice definitely a strong movement now spreading throughout the world.

Colonialism began its demise after World War Two and empires fell. The Roman Catholic Church is the last monarchical empire. A sure sign of the collapse of empire is the disintegration of its priesthood, a phenomenon this writer has been studying since my 1950's early days in ordained ministry. In America alone, 27,500 catholic priests, like myself have abandoned Catholic institutional ministry — an exodus from priesthood twice before matched in old Europe (Holy Roman Empire) in 1139 c.e. and again around the time of the Council of Trent in the 1500's. Many parish priests joined the ranks of the laity where they ought to have stayed all along. We have abandoned the plantation system of the Middle Ages. We have not abandoned God or the people. Cardinal Paul Cullen primary bishop of Ireland in the 1830's preached that God has cursed the people with the Potato Famine because of Irish infidelity. Cullen removed the hovel clergy distancing them from the people and setting them up as proper English gentlemen ……… and look today at the mess the Irish clergy is in? What has happened to the Ryan and Murphy Reports? Do the people know about the massiveness of clerical sexual abuse?

The massive collapse of the Roman Catholic priesthood
has been ignored by Rome and the local bishops...

The Changing Face of Priesthood

The vanishing priest is a study unto itself and best pursued through many good books, we recommending one THE CHANGING FACE OF THE PRIESTHOOD (2000 c.e. the Order of St. Benedict, Collegeville, Ky. ) by former seminary rector and now retired priest in good standing Fr Donald R. Cozzens. The massive collapse of the Roman Catholic priesthood has been ignored by Rome and the local bishops; they now have on their hands a once proud forest ravaged by the fire storms of clerical abuse and secret cover up on the part of the hierarchy. In response to the Mercury demand that the Catholic people speak out, I plead that they people are innocent, confused, ill-informed, and incapable of a sincere and courageous response. The people need education and dialogue, a table at which Rome refuses to sit. The people are giving up and will go elsewhere.

The 1965 reform council Vatican Two called for collegiality — aka the sharing of authority by bishops worldwide. Under Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot exemplary bishops were appointed in the United States that fostered the reforms of Vatican Two and life in the catholic church seemed so rosy in the 1970's. Paul the 6th, known as the Hamlet of the papacy died and Pope John Paul the First, reform minded and a healthy mountain hiker mysteriously passes away after a few months in office and the Polish Pope John Paul the 2nd came along with his big stick. This one man, old school conservative destroyed collegiality, appointing over a thousand bishops world wide most of whom never were parish priests, 'yes-men' opposing the mind of John the 23rd and pastoral clergy like Yves Congar. The Church grew silent and people witnessed the exile of learned clerics while devastation paralyzed the people of God. The institutional empire was dysfunctional and in a state of collapse. Andrew Greeley said in 1968 that it would take until the early years of the 2000's for the vast organization to become alert to the crisis.

I end today with a brief reference to the tragic condition of the Roman Catholic clergy worldwide, offering next week both a defense of the present clergy and a condemnation of those who choose power over service. I think it was Herbie in the Catholica Forum who recently put forth this question: "am I to choose between Catholicism and Christianity?" My reply was "ouch!" — so painful. Before we dare to address this issue let us plan to have dialogue — small group discussions about the tragedies of today's Church. Jesus will attend such meetings as long as truth is sought. There he will be as he promised!

Tom in San Jose. Ca. — on Jesus' side (18/04/2010)

[Index of Commentaries by Tom McMahon]