Recently in bishops Category
I don't have time to really develop this thought as far as I'd like to take it, but here goes.
Many people say that the Catholic Church in the USA is just a mouthpiece for the Republican Party and that we are just angry political-conservatives. IMHO, these charges are levied most often by people who do not really study the Church or her positions. Because if that was true, then the Church would likely toe the party line and be accordingly pro-Capital Punishment. Because in today's zeitgeist of short-sighted and squishy moral philosophy, the people who speak out against the Death Penalty are bleeding heart liberals, right?
Bah. The Church recognizes the dignity of Human Life. And everyone, even murderers, has dignity.
From the Catholic Key blog today:
Bishop Finn Prays at Missouri Execution Vigil
About an hour ago, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon denied clemency for Dennis Skillicorn who's scheduled to die tonight. At the same time Kansas City - St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn was down on J.C. Nichols Plaza in KC, rosary in hand, joining death penalty opponents at a vigil. Here's the story filed moments ago by Kevin Kelly.
Bishop prays as Missouri resumes executions
By Kevin Kelly
Catholic Key Associate EditorKANSAS CITY -- Just hours before Dennis Skillicorn was scheduled to die, Bishop Robert W. Finn prayed in public.
His rosary in hand, Bishop Finn joined the silent vigil May 19 at the J.C. Nichols fountain on Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, where the Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has conducted evening vigils for 20 years, just before Missouri executes another prisoner.
Skillicorn, 49, would be the 67th inmate put to death in Missouri in those 20 years since Missouri reinstated capital punishment. He will be the first since 2005, when executions by lethal injection in Missouri were put on a court-ordered moratorium that was lifted in 2007.
Bishop Finn told The Catholic Key that he offered his prayers for Skillicorn, who has been involved in Christian prison ministry since his conviction for the 1994 murder of Richard Drummond, an Excelsior Springs businessman.
He offered his prayers for the family of Drummond, who stopped along I-70 to offer Skillicorn and two other men assistance when their car broke down and was later robbed and shot execution style in a wooded area in Lafayette County.
And he offered his prayers for the sanctity of life.
"The principle reason we oppose the death penalty is because it is not necessary in order to protect society, and if it is not necessary, we ought not to kill another person," Bishop Finn said. "That is what we learned from Pope John Paul II."
In his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote: "Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this" and that society "ought not go to the extreme of executing offenders except in cases of absolute necessity . . . when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent."
Pope John Paul II also personally appealed to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan during the papal visit to St. Louis to spare the life of Darrell Mease, a Missouri inmate whose execution date was rescheduled to avoid the dates that the pope was in Missouri.
"The public witness is important," Bishop Finn told The Key. "Our laws need to be reconsidered."
Bishop Finn said that his presence at the vigil will also serve to register his personal protest against the failure of the Missouri General Assembly this year to fund even a study of the state's death penalty system.
"We wanted the possibility of a moratorium, but at the very least we should have had a study," the bishop said, noting that three persons have been released from Missouri's death row after they were later found to be innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted and sentenced to death.
"There are serious flaws in this process. Our elected leaders should have agreed that we ought to study this in a methodical way to determine if we are at least doing this in accordance to the law," Bishop Finn said.
"They failed in their responsibility to support that study," he said.
Bishop Finn said that he has been impressed to hear of how Skillicorn has spent his years on death row, ministering to other inmates, working in restorative justice, and editing a national magazine, Compassion, written by fellow inmates.
"I am happy that there are some indications of a conversion and a transformation," he said. "If that is the case, then thanks be to God."
Bishop Finn said he will pray for God's graces for the Drummond family.
"The incomprehensible suffering of the Drummond family needs God's healing, too," he said.
But Bishop Finn said he is compelled to offer public witness in defense of life.
"When we face the mysteries of life and death, prayer is the best thing we can do," he said.
"We stand up as free citizens and our neighbors need to learn that there is something here that is very important," Bishop Finn said.
"It has to do with the sanctity of life, even if someone has made a horrible, horrible mistake," he said.
"Our society will reject capital punishment before it is all said and done," Bishop Finn said. "There is no doubt in my mind."
There is also no doubt in the mind of Donnie Morehouse of the Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who was elated to learn that Bishop Finn would be joining the May 19 vigil.
"One of the things that the bishop's presence will mean is to point out how important this issue is, and it's about time that (Gov.) Jay Nixon pays attention and grants clemency to Dennis Skillicorn," Morehouse told The Key on May 18, less than 36 hours before Skillicorn's scheduled 12:01 a.m., May 20 execution.
The coalition "is a diverse group of people who realize that the death penalty is not good policy, it's not good criminal justice, and it's not something we should be doing," Morehouse said.
This was not a position that I used to hold. I was in the opposite camp, the "let 'em fry!" crowd. And it should be noted that Church teaching does, broadly, permit execution if the situation warrants it.
See Article 5 in the Catechism at section 2267 (http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2art5.shtml):
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm--without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself--the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."
I suppose that you could leave it open to debate as to whether our penal system is much different today than it was 1000 years ago (when Church executions were pretty common), but I think that you'd have to make some pretty dramatic claims to get to that point.
The real issue here is that to be a Christian means to acknowledge the inherent worth of each person as a child of God. Humans have value. Souls have value. And it is hardly the role of the state to manipulate that value to serve their own ends.
I actually became pro-life (related to Capital Punishment) from a secular point of view several years ago when I was not very interested in living out the Faith. Still, I determined that if government was truly of the people, by the people and for the people, then it shouldn't be in the business of killing the people. Imprisonment, sure. Loss of voting rights, sure. Loss of many rights given by the state, sure. But life is not given by the state. The right of life is an inalienable human right. Looking back, I'd say that this was my first real understanding of natural rights, and their more-intimidating cousin, natural law. I can't say that my thinking was that far advanced when my head was rolling through Lincoln's civil-war rhetoric, but that's where I suppose that I began to really internalize the idea that some things can't justly be taken by a government which does not give that right. Truth be told, I'm really still not sure I understand all the implications of natural rights and natural law; I am sure that I understand that these questions are not as simple as we are often led to believe.
There is a patron saint of Death Row inmates. He is Saint Dismas, the "good thief", the man to Jesus' right at the execution. As you recall in Luke 23, there were two other men being crucified when Christ was slain. Tradition tells us that these men, Dismas and Gestas, held conversation with our Lord in his final hours. Gestas, the unrepentant man, mocked Jesus-- while Dismas rebuked the other.
And one of those robbers who were hanged, blasphemed him, saying: If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying: Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art condemned under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was killed by the state for a crime he didn't commit. The first saint of the Church, a man whom Christ Himself canonized, was killed by the state for a crime he certainly DID commit. And still 2000 years later, we make the same mistake as the Jews who called for Jesus' life and the Romans who willingly assented to their demands.
The Church is not interested in politics. She is not interested in the polls that say abortion or capital punishment is popular among Americans-- or in cutting off feeding tubes the bedridden or in stem-cell research or anything where opposition seems archaic and backwards. The Catholic Church is interested in saving souls for Christ. It is God who gives us those inalienable rights, and only He can judge with His natural law.
St. Dismas, pray for us!
I don't usually talk about politics on this site. That's partly because I've been in a state of politics-burnout for the last 4 or 5 years and partly because religious politics are so over-covered in other people's blogs.
Sometimes though, religion and politics cross paths in a way that catches my mind for a little bit.
There's an important and compelling story in the news right now regarding the premier Catholic university in America, Notre Dame. The University has invited President Barack Obama to deliver this year's commencement speech; Notre Dame will also confer upon him an honorary Doctorate. This is a pretty typical occurrence in colleges, of course. The president always gets to deliver a graduation address or two; it's quite an honor for a college to be visited by the President of the United States.
The problem is that President Obama's well-known pro-abortion stance is speaking at the premier Catholic university in America-- and the Catholic Church is unequivocally and undeniably pro-life.
It's a big deal.
Catholics must be undeniably pro-life. I don't want to over-simplify this, but it's not really a matter of debate. Oh, sure, some people will debate this or try to turn it into a complicated theological discussion of when does God impart a soul to a human--but seriously. It's not an open question. Rome has spoken, the cause is finished. Further, when matters of morality intersect with political decisions, Catholics need to vote according to Catholic senses of morality. This is not the same as the Church endorsing any particular candidate--please do not be confused about that. But moral religions instruct their followers to uphold a moral code; affecting behavior is intrinsic to religion. And while the Republican Party seems to be the official party of Christian voters, it hasn't always been that way. In fact, Catholics have a tendency to vote Democrat in presidential elections. 
Still, the Church does not endorse candidates, she promotes issues for voting with consciences--and if certain candidates fall on the wrong side of that issue, the Church needs to speak up about the subject. During the 2008 Presidential, hometown Bishop Robert Finn (of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph) even went as far as saying that people who voted for Barack Obama jeopardized their eternal salvation. The matter was not his Democraticness, it was his affinity for abortion that was the issue at hand. If both candidates were pro-life, or if both candidates were not pro-life, the Church wouldn't have much to say on the subject. Further, it is my opinion that, considering that the Democratic Party often speaks in the rhetoric of human rights, if the Democratic Party were to front a pro-life candidate, that candidate would be extremely appealing to the Catholic hierarchy.
But that's not our status quo.
Instead, we've got the most pro-babykilling President since Roe v Wade. And since the The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church, it is absolutely incongruent that the premier Catholic College in America is inviting President Obama to give their graduation address. It's not a matter of Separation of Church and State. A commencement speech is a representation of what a school hopes for their students--and there's a lot to like about the President... if you can take abortion out of the picture. Unfortunately, you cannot.
But the Catholic university's administration doesn't seem to be interested in upholding this piece of Catholic teaching. Furthermore, they don't seem to be very interested in listening to what their student's say about the subject either. In fact, a number of student groups are protesting the President's appearance on campus, including:
Notre Dame Right to Life
The Irish Rover Student Newspaper
Notre Dame College Republicans
The University of Notre Dame Anscombe Society
Notre Dame Identity Project
Militia of the Immaculata
Children of Mary
Orestes Brownson Council
Notre Dame Law School Right to Life
Notre Dame Law St Thomas More Society
In their combined response, they say
In defense of the unborn, we wish to express our deepest opposition to Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.'s invitation of President Barack Obama to be the University of Notre Dame's principal commencement speaker and the recipient of an honorary degree. Our objection is not a matter of political partisanship, but of President Obama's hostility to the Catholic Church's teachings on the sanctity of human life at its earliest stages. His recent dedication of federal funds to overseas abortions and to embryonic stem cell research will directly result in the deaths of thousands of innocent human beings. We cannot sit by idly while the University honors someone who believes that an entire class of human beings is undeserving of the most basic of all legal rights, the right to live.The University's decision runs counter to the policy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops against honoring pro-choice politicians. In their June 2004 statement Catholics in Political Life, the bishops said, "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." Fr. Jenkins defends his invitation by saying that it does not honor or suggest support for the President's views on abortion, but rather support for his leadership. But our "fundamental moral principles" must be respected at all times. And the principle that requires us to refrain from the direct killing of the innocent has a special status even among the most fundamental principles. President Obama's actions have consistently shown contempt for this principle, and he has sought political gain by making light of its clear political implications.
Their opinion is clear.
Who else's opinion is clear? His Excellency, Bishop John D'Arcy, the ordinary of Fort Wayne-South Bend where Notre Dame is located, whose statement says:
"the measure of any Catholic institution is not only what it stands for, but also what it will not stand for."Indeed. Bishop D'Arcy will be skipping the event; the local bishop would usually be one of the highest dignitaries at Notre Dame's commencement.
What is the point of a Catholic school if they're not there to promote Catholic living? Catholic teaching? Catholic morality? There are many fine public and secular private institutions in the United States--why go through the bother of having a Catholic school if they're going to give their pulpit to a man who so adamantly against this item of Catholic principles? It's not like abortion is some piddley little issue. It's one of the central issues in Catholic living. You know, the living part.
What can you do? Sign the petition to the Notre Dame University President at http://www.notredamescandal.com/ and let Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C. know that you're disappointed that Notre Dame is abandoning their Catholicism for the prestige of hosting President Obama. Just whom are they really serving?
But petitions aside, if you're the kind of person to add a personal touch, you might drop the university President a letter.
President, University of Notre Dame
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
There will also be a number of on-campus protests that weekend.
What do you expect out of your Catholic schools? Authentic Catholic teaching? Upholding real Catholic principles? People living in accordance with the Catholic Faith?
http://www.notredamescandal.com/
Our Lady, Notre Dame, pray for us!
It is an interesting cultural touchstone to consider how priests dress themselves for Holy Mass. You can tell something about a parish that adorns its advent wreaths in blue candles, you can tell something about priest who wears his stole on the outside of his chasuble, you can tell something about a church that has "Glory and Praise" hymnals. Likewise, you can tell something about the bishop by the type of mitre he wears.
Consider the difference today between tall and short mitres on bishops. A short, squatty mitre smacks of a liberal, moderny bishop; a soaringly tall mitre suggests a "high-church" traddy bishop.
Exhibits:
Bp. Tod Brown, Diocese of Orange County, CA:
Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, CA:
BY CONTRAST:
Bishop Robert Finn, Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO:
The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, SSPX:
NOTE:
It's not a totally reliable indicator of episcopal orthodoxy, of course. Bishops usually have more than one mitre! One good example:
Archbishop Raymond Burke (short mitre), Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO (Emeritus):
Archbishop Raymond Burke (medium mitre):
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my own Archbishop, His Excellency Joseph Naumann, wears a fairly short mitre. In my estimation, Abp. Naumann is a suitably orthodox bishop and I am happy to be in his archdiocese. I wish he were a little more accommodating to traditional Catholics in Johnson County, but I really can't call it much of a complaint. And you go to Church with the Ordinary you have, not the Ordinary you want to have, so I'll be happy that we've at least got one of the "good guys" and not one of the renegade bishops. I think that if Abp. Naumann wears a short mitre, it's because the dude's huge. (note: ordinary is another word for "bishop") If you've ever seen the good Archbishop in person, you know that he's a mountain of a man. I bet his short mitre is just a function of his height.
In the end, it's not the hat. It's the man under the hat. Still, these exceptions aside, I think that the hat has become a fairly reliable indicator of the man under the hat. Vestments have trends just like anything else. Certain styles come in and out of fashion--in church styles, the fashions often belie some bigger issue.
This scene from the 1964 movie Becket is a good example of a very short mitre that would have been very typical of the gothic era of the Church:
The days of the renaissance era were extravagant ones for Catholicism. The renaissance era produced so many of the Church's great artistic treasures--they were also colored by corruption and underhanded behavior at the top of the Church (check out the "renaissance popes" some time to understand the full scope of corruption). But for all of its impropriety, it was the height of artistry. During this time the mitre soared to peaking heights--and bishops that wore short mitres were seen as fuddy-duddies that weren't in on the party. But the party ended when Martin Luther began his reformation which eventually split into Protestantism; as the protestant reformation was met by the Church's counter-reformation, a cultural shift was underway in Catholicism.
This period gave birth to great discipline in the church. It founded so many great religious orders like the Discalced Carmelites and a resurgence to the Benedictines, it was the era that founded the Jesuits and the Dominicans.
The baroque mitre stayed tall and dominant. I think that it was a mark of representing the authority and tradition of the Church in a time when it was more vogue to challenge the Church than listen to her (I freely admit that my own personal bias may enter the analysis here). The tall mitre became the standard of the episcopacy for a very long time.
Enter: the 1960's.
Like renaissance tall-mitre bishops were distrustful of paleo-gothic small-mitred bishops as being spoilsports, the free-wheeling times in the church that arrived with the 60's, 70's and 80's were distrustful of the stodgy ordinaries in their tall hats. It was another cultural shift underway. Mitres became short and fat (didn't we all?) hitting their nadir sometime around His Holiness Benedict XVI was elevated to the papacy. Not quite the little mitres of gothic Catholicism, but you get the picture. Tall-mitred bishops were curmudgeons or stalwarts, relics of a bygone era. The new episcopacy was just this-side of iconoclasm and would have rather not taken part in the tall-mitred feet dragging of their old fashioned predecessors.
I should make it clear that I'm using some pretty serious over-generalization at this point.
For around four decades, it was the norm of the bishops to dress with plain and simple flowy vestments (the Roman chasuble is still the norm for priests in America--it's the top robe that Father wears for Mass. A Roman chasuble is typical of the gothic era; the "fiddleback" chasuble is associated with a baroque aesthetic... and with priests who offer the Tridentine Latin Mass) with short mitres.
The shift began when Pope Benedict XVI asked Archbishop Piero Marini to step down as the Papal Master of Ceremonies. Papal MCs basically run the public appearances of the pope; they coordinate Masses and speeches, they present him with his vestments and control the appearance of the papacy. Abp. Piero Marini was Pope John Paul II's Papal MC and essentially created the "JP2 Style". It was the style that Benedict inherited when he assumed the throne, the earliest pictures of Benedict as pope have him in some vestments that totally don't match the style which he models today. It's a big sign of whether or not a photo is old or recent, as they are typical of the two Marinis who served as papal MC's.
Pope Benedict XVI with "old Marini" Archbishop Piero Marini as Papal MC:
Pope Benedict XVI with "new Marini" Monsignor Guido Marini as Papal MC:
Some of the differences can be explained as simple fashion: 60's and 70's minimalism is giving way to a little more ornamentation. But I also think that we're in a period of aesthetic and theological reactionism to the post-Vatican II era. It's a strange time. I'm beginning to think of this period of Catholicism as post-Conciliarism; Catholic are reacting to the stuff we lost to iconoclasm in the 70's, 80's and 90's. The Church is tradding-up.
Frankly, we're probably just tired of stripped down minimalism, we'd like a little... interestingness. Some weight. Some appreciation of beauty. Of tradition. Of orthodoxy. Of glory.
The mitres are a historical outward sign of this. It's not a perfect measure, of course. It's not the hat. It's the man under the hat. But it's still proving a somewhat reliable standard of what kind of bishop is in charge.
A mitre-gauge.
In the time while I was hiat'in, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas released an overview and plan for its Johnson County region, available on the Archdiocesean website. I'm going to go over this document over the next few posts. I live in Johnson County and think that are in a happily and sadly average part of an average diocese in the United States.
First, a primer: the entire globe is divided into territories, called Dioceses. The head person of a diocese is the Bishop-- he is (oversimplification alert) the spiritual and secular CEO of that geographic area. The Bishop's boss is the Pope, though there are other groups and organizations who have influence on him, including other Bishops (in the USA, all Bishops belong to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which operates like a loose coalition. The USSCB does not speak for any particular Bishop, but makes advisements and creates a single-ish voice for all American Bishops. Suffice it to say that the group has it's share of internal politics, for better and worse.) and a Vatican committee called the Congregation for Bishops, which is (again, oversimplification) the HR department for Bishops.
Important dioceses are given the title of Archdiocese and their Bishops are called Archbishops. In the United States, basically the biggest Diocese in a state is called the Archdiocese. Off the top of my head, the only state that I can think of with two Archdioceses is California, with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Archdiocese of San Francisco. It is important to note that in practice, there is no material difference between a Diocese and an Archdiocese or a Bishop and an Archbishop. One is as good as another. In the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, our Ordinary (another name for bishop) is Archbishop Naumann.
There are some Archbishops who do not serve an Archdiocese. Rather, they serve the Vatican itself and usually have some role that affects people spanning a lot of Dioceses or perform some particular function not related to operating a diocese. These Bishops are called Titular Archbishops. Some Dioceses have Auxiliary Bishops, who are like "assistant Bishops". It is particularly common if a Diocese covers a big geographical area or has a lot of Catholics in the Diocese; not all Dioceses have Auxillaries. When Bishops retire, they are given the title of Bishop Emiritus. These Bishops retain all the spiritual faculties of a Bishop, but they're retired from the operations of a Diocese. Some Bishops carry the rank of Cardinal. The most significant duty of a Cardinal is that he elects a new Pope. Not all Cardinals are bishops-- a fact that surprises even many lifelong Catholics. We could go on about this for a long time, but there is a good website that explains every office, role and officeholder in the church at http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/. The site in encyclopedic and is maintained by a Kansas City area man. It's his hobby. Wow. He's also a nice guy. (plaid shirt, fourth picture) But I digress.
I live in Kansas, which has 4 dioceses (Kansas City, Dodge City, Salina, Wichita). The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas covers 21 counties and a big chunk of the state. For administrative purposes, it is further broken down into a number of regions. The Archdiocese, with the help of consultants, has been developing a "Pastoral Plan" for each region. The goal is to make sure they are meeting the needs of the Church now and in the future.
This is a good idea. I hope every diocese is doing it, and I hope that they continue to develop these plans over time. Populations are shifting, country churches are having a hard time keeping parishoners as the rural towns are slowly disappearing-- but the remaining Catholics in the area need to still be served. And like they're changing politics and business and schools and everything else, the growing Hispanic population is changing things. A significant number of Hispanics are Catholic; the Church needs to be ministering to them. And though there's some evidence that the number of men applying to the priesthood is on the upswing, the hemmoraging has been so significant since the Second Vatican Council that they've got a long way to go to replace them all. (Aside: earlier this year, I bought a concise book called The Index of Leading Catholic Indicators that cataloged what has happened to the Church in America since the 60's. It's truly stunning. The introduction to the book was written by Pat Buchanan, reprinted here. Some of Buchanan's rhetoric is over the top-- pure PJB. But the facts are inarguable. Read it. It'll make your jaw drop. I had no idea how far we've fallen.) It's good to have a plan to make sure that you're covering all the bases.
The Johnson County Pastoral Plan is notable for its comprehensive look at parishes and schools. And though the report is fair, it does not pull punches. Some of our parishes are in trouble, some are coming out of the woods and some are in good shape. I am particularly interested in the information on the Catholic schools-- both grade school and high school.
So read the Johnson County Pastoral Plan. It's important to know what's going on in your neighborhood.
