tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39496539266642253322024-02-08T08:30:17.768-05:00ArchangelMonsignor Harry J. Byrne, JCD * * *
Comment/contact:larchstar@aol.comMsgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-59227034258348254212012-08-18T21:00:00.000-04:002012-08-25T14:14:20.707-04:00EAT, DRINK, TALK<b><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"></span></b><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><b>O</b><b>ur eating habits become ordinary, routine, and uneventful.
But sometimes they take on new meaning. Birthdays and anniversaries have a
special cachet. More than eating and drinking is involved. Important business
deals may be m</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>ade at lunch; engagement rings presented with champagne toasts at
dinner. An extra factor can turn a meal into a memorable occasion. In
sixty-seven years as a priest in New
York</b>, <b>I’ve experienced hundreds of meals that
provided nourishment; a relatively few that stand out in memory.</b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> The Byrnes had
moved out of the Bronx</span><span style="font-size: large;">, where we had been close
to Nana Byrne. Now it was more of a trip from Mount Vernon to Grandma Byrne’s. Down the
Post Road then west on Gun Hill Road, </span><span style="font-size: large;"> past the twin towers of the Franciscan Church
to Nana’s house. The “biggee” at Nana’s was the cuckoo clock. We carefully
watched the little door open and the bird come out. Our trip featured an early
dinner at Brienlinger’s. Dad took me to the Men’s’ Room.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> Returning to our table, I spotted a sign
saying, “This way to the bar for a quick drink”. My recollection, after these
many years: Nana and her cuckoo clock, the twin towers of the church and the
sign encouraging a sneaky drink!</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> St. Emeric’s
rectory. In June 1949, I returned from Catholic U.
with a Doctorate in Canon Law and was assigned to the Archdiocesan Tribunal
with residence at St. Emeric’s. Vin Brosnan, the pastor, a Chaplain in World
War II, was a delightful boss. When I arrived home after a day at the Chancery,
he would hear me enter and call out from his room, “Okay. Brud, the martinis
are waiting”. Dinner would follow with his interesting stories of the war.
Dinner was always pleasant. But then, Bros bought a television. The yearwas1950. A new pervasive presence had entered our apartment and our world. He
set it up in the dining room. It ended conversation. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">After a week, I spoke up.
Bros was surprised. “You don’t like
it?” “Not really, Monsignor. Our conversation is overwhelmed by Hopalong Cassidy. I'd rather chat with you. You’ve had an
interesting life.” With further friendly remarks, that was it. The TV remained
in his quarters. Evening meals were pleasant in the company of this great man and
priest, even if, by rare chance, a war story was repeated for a third time.
Memorable meals, memorable conversations, a memorable man. A young priest had
spoken up to a veteran monsignor. A memorable occasion, indeed.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. Cameo Restaurant, Lexington
and 86<sup>th</sup> Street.
I was now a full time chancery man with residence at St. Thomas More’s. Frequently
late for supper after a busy buerocratic day, I found it better to relax
before eating with a shower in the summer. There was no air-conditioning in
subway cars at that time. To the Cameo, then, and its regulars: Florsheim Shoe
store manager, district leader and members, Jefferson Democratic Club. Before
entering, check out who’s inside. If a certain woman community activist is
present, keep walking. She never stops talking and does not remind you of
springtime in nearby Central Park. Benny, the Greek
waiter, was an interesting study. He loved to tell the Father slightly anti-clerical
jokes and stories about his need to keep alert. On a recent night, a couple has
dinner; man pays the check; leaves tip on table and goes to men’s room. Girl friend
steals tip. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">More serious matters occurred on 86<sup>th</sup> Street some years ago: drug
dealing on the north side, prostitution on the south, tragically played out by
two young blondes with their pimps nearby. Hats off to the NYPD! A mounted
police officer was posted on each side of the street. From their lofty posts,
the cops could see transactions under way. The horses provided quick arrivals
at the spot. Problem solved. The Cameo is memorable to me as an occasional evening
oasis for its food, staff, neighborhood diners and its location just off 86<sup>th</sup>
street with its sometimes street theater.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> Michele’s Restaurant,
Washington, DC As a student </span><span style="font-size: large;"> at Catholic
U. 1946-1949, my classmate , Terence, later Cardinal, Cooke, myself and two other
priests went to dinner one evening at the fashionable Michele’s in our clerical
attire. We were graciously received by the maitre’d, who with a bow, ushered us
to a prominent table. When we were seated, three musicians with violin, zither,
and viola bowed towards us and played, to our considerable surprise, the “Ave Maria”.
At the conclusion, sensing an atmosphere of nineteenth century Vienna, we four ceremoniously rose and bowed
to the smiling musicians. Yes. A colorful evening, indeed.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. Petaluma,
1<sup>st</sup> Ave
and 73<sup>rd</sup> Street,
diagonally across the street from the Ronald McDonald House, a residence for parents
who have children afflicted with cancer. My association began when, I, as pastor
of St. Joseph’s
of Yorkville sold our convent to the RMDH. Increased demands brought about construction
of a new building on 73<sup>rd</sup>
Street accommodating eighty-five families. As a
board member, I participated in the design including a chapel and establishing
a Pastoral Care Department. I offered Mass there on Wednesday evenings, occasionally
followed by dinner at Petaluma.
One Wednesday, the maitre d’ noticed the smudge on the foreheads of my accompanying
friends. “Oh my,” he exclaimed, “Ash Wednesday. Would you be able to give ashes
to my staff?” After dinner, I went back to the chapel for the ashes. Staff was
gathered in the cavernous kitchen: waiters, busboys, chefs, dishwashers,
bartenders, and hat check girls. I conducted a brief ceremony and applied ashes
to a variety of foreheads! Diners appeared quizzical. Wait staff with clean
faces had suddenly vanished and then reappeared, marked with the ashes of
Lent. It was, indeed, an evening to be remembered.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">6.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>6. The RMDH is an expensive facility to maintain. Resident
families pay a small amount, if they can afford it. Among various efforts to
raise the necessary funds, an annual gala is held at the Waldorf-Astoria,
bringing in enormous individual and corporate contributions. As the only clergy
board member, I was privileged to provide the invocation. At one of the galas,
as I began the prayer, I could not help but notice the well-dressed affluent
men and women. The evening gowns of the women appeared like moving lanterns of
color and style, not to be found in the outer boroughs. This sight prompted me
to add extemporaneously to my prayer. “And may I suggest to those who are Catholic
in this distinguished assemblage to pray, as we experience the shortage of
priests, that our Holy Father would become aware of the wit, wisdom, and charm
of this half of the human race and brighten our Church by ordaining some and
permitting others to marry members of the clergy.” Applause was heartfelt. Some
stopped at my table to laughingly suggest that I might be sent up the river to
a little country parish. Apparently Cardinal O’Connor was advised of the incident
and had his Vicar General send me a note, </span><span style="font-size: large;"> disapproving of my “trivializing” the Holy
Father. It was a memorable night at the Waldorf!</span></b></div>
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Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-13655815943818357042012-07-28T15:39:00.001-04:002012-07-29T15:29:12.724-04:00MY FAVORITE POPE? JOHN XXIII<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many years ago visiting Scotland, I saw a few churches disfigured by black tar graffiti, telling the Pope to do something to himself that was quite gross. Beneath that line was written, “But not John XXIII”. Two different views of the papacy were shaped by writers with different religious affiliations and personality types. But can we, Catholics sharing the one faith, adopt different preferences for different popes? Part of being Catholic is acceptance of the pope as the Head of the Church. But with that acceptance, we can, as with friends and associates, have different degrees of friendship to a pope. Nothing, of course, gross like the first graffiti. It is fine that Catholics embrace the Pope as the chief of the Church. I am puzzled at how some of the faithful enthusiastically embrace equally two different popes with quite different and even conflicting mentalities. This paper looks into such different papal mentalities. Popes come in various sizes and shapes. Ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and personal qualities shape each papal personality. As a New York Catholic priest, I look to Benedict XVI as the successor of Peter and the head of my Church. Back in the 60s, I regarded John XXIII in much the same fashion. But there was a profound difference. Governance philosophy! John XXIII believed in seeking facts and forming policies through many sources, witness Vatican Council II, in which, in the mid 1960s, he brought together bishops from all over the world. The Council documents gave new identity and meaning to the individual faithful and gave bishops a recognizable role in policy development. Belief in an organization by its participants can be secured only if they feel they are being invested in the institution, being made to have a stake in it, as well as being asked to support it. John XXIII tried to do that. He looked to the wide world to fashion a new vision for the Church as it relates to the modern world. John Paul II and Benedict XVI looked within themselves and tradition for their vision of Church, which they have continued to impose as they centralize the authority of the papacy that is their own. The faithful accept the Pope, whoever he may be, as the head of their Church; but they can choose to prefer a pope with a more participatory policy of governance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The following examples illustrate the centralization of the Church’s governance and authority under John Paul and Benedict with a corresponding diminution of the authority of the bishops. 1. The International Commission for English in the Liturgy, made up of appointees by bishops from English-speaking countries, presented in 1998 a new translation of the Mass to the Vatican for approval. It was rejected. John Paul had decided on a different manner of translation. In 2001, ICEL was disbanded and new bishops, appointed by the pope, took up the work. In 2010 John Paul's new Missal was presented to the USCCB for approval. I have it on good authority, although anonymous, that the presenter said, in effect, that this need not take a lot of discussion, but could be simply approved, as indeed it was. Its use became mandatory in the US in Advent 2011, despite petitions from priests and people asking that the translation first be tried before final acceptance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. Caritas International, a ederation of 165 Catholic welfare agencies providing humanitarian aid to refugees and those distressed by natural disasters or warfare, was governed by its General Assembly, its members appointed by bishops in seven regions of the world. In 2004, it was reorganized under John Paul II, oversight given to Cor Unum, a papal agency. In 2011, Benedict, in his wish to have the aid agency be more linked to evangelization, interfered in the election of the General Secretary, putting his man in that position.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">3. At some point in the papacy of John Paul II, national associations of bishops like the USCCB received a Vatican directive that certain matters decided by a national conference by a majority vote, would henceforth be referred to Rome unless it had received a unanimous vote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">4. Further Vatican efforts to curb new voices for change, this time from Presbyteral Councils, appeared in the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law, where, unlike the previous model, the bishop now chairs the Council and prepares its agenda. The bishop's presence is undoubtedly a chilling factor as to open and candid discussion. His agenda control establishes his priorities among topics. It can also serve him as a blocking instrument.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">5. John Paul, made the Synods of Bishops, expressions, not of their voice and vision, but those that were his own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Observers may well wonder at the continuing appetite, some might say, voracious, for centrality and power on the part of Rome and its acceptance by local bishops. Did any object? This trend is clearly in opposition to what Vatican II had engendered in the way of subsidiarity and collegiality. For example, the Vatican’s dismissal of the ICEL bishop-appointed members after two decades of work, their replacement by creatures of John Paul II, and then the imposition of the new translation in Advent of 2011? It was confidentially reported to me that when the new translation of the Missal was presented to the USCCB for acceptance, the presenter declared that there was no need for discussion; a quick approval would be fine. And the USCCB gave its quick approval. Undoubtedly unanimous! No division in this house! When Benedict took over Caritas International, did our bishops offer any opposition? That John Paul used the extraordinary personality that was his to use the Synods of Bishops to negate the voice of the bishops in favor of his own is shown in many of his “Exhortations”, which, under a different name, were intended to express the views of the bishops. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Many examples are available. Here is one. At the conclusion of the Synod of Asia in 1998, a numbered Proposition of the bishops asked that the papal diplomatic corps and nuntiatures be more internationalized. John Paul’s response, connected by a footnote to the Proposition, stated, “The fathers of the Synod praised the papal diplomatic corps for its helpfulness”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This paper intended to illustrate two styles of papal governance and raises questions as to how the lack of continuity in papal rule has affected the legacy of Vatican II and the participation of bishops, priests, and the faithful in forming policies for church administration. </span> </div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-15269600833176531482012-07-19T14:39:00.000-04:002012-07-19T14:39:30.487-04:00RELIGION: "FREE EXERCISE" OR "ESTABLISHMENT" ?<br />
<h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 15pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://nycivic.org/comment/reply/875/353#comment-353"><span style="color: #224970; text-decoration: none;">MID TERM REVIEW</span></a></span></h3>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I agree with Henry Stern's positive appraisal of Mayor Bloomberg's governance. I have one negative: his effort to bar only religious groups from renting public school facilities, when school is not in session. </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Since World War II, people of various faiths have moved into new amity. This is not mere tolerance, but respect for differences, which is a hallmark of our city. Current traces of hostility seem to come from those possessed of an exclusively secular ideology, who see any "accommodation"of religion as a newly perceived "establishment".</span> <span style="font-size: small;">Justice Kennedy of our highest court has characterized this as "a recent and, in my view, a most unwelcome addition to our tangled establishment clause jurisprudence".</span></span></div>
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<br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Our Supreme Court has a history of balancing the "establishment" and 'free exercise" clauses. Our Federal District Court has recently declared the constitutionality of a Bronx Evangelical Church using a public school's facilities. I conjecture that the congregation, at issue, does not consist of affluent members, financially able to construct their own religious buildings</span>.<span style="font-size: small;"> Rental of public school facilities enhances their freedom to worship, so basic in common practice, authorized by state law, and consonant with our nation's constitution.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I think it quite out of order for Mayor Bloomberg to establish the city as plaintiff again, this time to appeal the decision of the District Court. A few year's ago, Mayor Bloomberg </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;">enthusiastically supported the construction of a mosque near ground-zero in the name of our city's devotion to freedom of worship. Mr. Mayor, please apply that principle here.</span></span></div>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-11726460069856109612012-07-06T22:46:00.000-04:002012-07-06T23:10:31.695-04:00LEAVE OR STAY ?<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">Bill Keller, the Editor of the New York Times from 2003 to 2011 now
holds forth as a periodic columnist. On June 16, his Op-Ed piece
described many of the tensions within the Church, leading him and many others
to become "collapsed Catholics". He recommends that those Catholics,
who are disaffected by the leadership of the Church, rather than continuing
their fight for reform, should leave the Church.<br />
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Two days later, four Letters to the Editor were published in the NY Times. Each
expressed sympathy with Mr. Keller's diagnosis and prognosis for the
Catholic Church. But no one seemed about to take his recommendation to leave.<br />
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Marc Lavallee writes that "to leave allows no room for reconciliation,
reformation, and peace within conflict that is central to Christian social
life".<br />
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James Jenkins: "Catholics need to understand that the church fostered by
John XXIII is surely dead. It is past time that they should let go...Abandoned
and betrayed by their shepherds, Catholics will struggle to keep the faith
alike for future generations."<br />
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Jean E. Rosenfeld declares: "Catholicism has a distinguished spiritual
tradition of cultural openness; while fundamentalism is driven by intolerant
exclusivity...Rottweiler (Pope Benedict's name) politics is destroying
Catholicism. As a Catholic woman, I call on the Catholic sisterhood, lay and
religious, to stay, speak, and reclaim Catholicism."<br />
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Marion Eagen states: "The behavior of the Roman Catholic hierarchy
disappoints me on so many fronts...How many times have I contemplated joining
the Episcopal Church?...Why do I stay? Because my own parish, with its engaged
pastor, deacon and staff, vibrant liturgy, and forward-leaning membership,
is a comfortable home that embraces each one of us in times of joy and sorrow
and provides an atmosphere for real spiritual growth...I would suggest that
those who are on the verge of leaving that they should shop around first. There
are welcoming and joyful Catholic communities just waiting for you to join. I
know. I belong to one."<br />
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Vox populi! <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #211104; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9pt;">posted by Msgr. Harry J. Byrne | <a href="http://www.harryjbyrne.blogspot.com/2012/07/leave-or-stay.html" title="permanent link"><span style="color: #473624;">3:13 PM</span></a> | <a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3949653926664225332&postID=922253242164641833"><span style="color: #473624;">0 Comments</span></a></span></div>
</div>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-66525531752657354742012-05-30T15:56:00.000-04:002012-06-06T17:33:52.494-04:00CONVERSATIONS REDUX<br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Archangel</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">’s last post treated the basic nature of
“conversation” as mouth to ear communication between individuals as
different from e-mail, I-pod, and other assorted electronic and cyber
instruments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The topic opened up
a storehouse of remembered conversations that shed light on the subject of the
conversations and the qualities of the participants. Here is a good example of successful
word of mouth conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;"> After I retired as pastor of Epiphany Church
in 1996, I became Weekend </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Associate at St.Ann’s Church in Ossining, NY,
founded in 1927 by Italian working people. The pastor, Father Ed Byrne, is
energetic and creative with a number of educational, spiritual, and service programs
in the parish. Italian parishioners in recent years have become outnumbered
by Hispanic individuals and families. Most are from Ecuador. It is
not surprising that slight frictions developed between the two ethnic
groups. Father Ed, fluent in Spanish from five years of service in Venezuela, has
seen a remarkable increase in the number of Hispanic parishioners. On his
arrival in 1994, there was one Sunday Mass in Spanish. Now there are three.
They are conducted in the school hall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;"> Several years ago,
Ruperto Garcia, a member of the Hispanic community, asked to meet with Father Ed.
He pointed out that at the 10:30 Spanish Mass in the school hall, an
average of just over 400 attended, while the 10:30 English Mass in the church
averaged about 200! Would it not be more appropriate to hold the Spanish Mass
in the church and the English Mass in the school? A question with two “no win”
answers!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Ed and Ruperto were
both intelligent and devout. Ed had long since proved himself to the Hispanic
community. Special Masses featured readings in English and in Spanish. Holy
Thursday processions were alive with hymns in both languages, as well as in
Italian, Tagalog, and Portuguese. Hispanic day laborers were frequently cheated
in various ways by their “patrones”. St.
Ann’s maintains a HELP clinic, at which cheated laborers
would find assistance. Some times a mere letter from a HELP attorney to the
employer would solve the problem. If that did not suffice, HELP would shepherd
the case through Small Claims Court. The parish sponsored classes in English as
a second language</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Father Ed recited a
litany of accommodations the parish had made to the newcomers. He described the
reactions of the Italian parishioners. They had founded and built the church
and school. At times, they felt overwhelmed by the Hispanics. Most of the
children in the public and parish schools spoke Spanish. Many Masses featured
readings in both languages with hymns and instrumental music frequently in the
Spanish idiom. They felt that some of their native culture was being superseded
by a different one. Their sensitivities could reach a breaking point if the
10:30 Mass in Spanish moved the English Mass to the school. The Italians had
the ultimate threat. They could vote with their feet. St. Augustine’s was only a mile down Route
Nine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Father Ed and
Ruperto had an important conversation. It was agreed that the Sunday 10:30
English Mass would remain in the church. Father Ed, diplomat extraordinaire,
priest exemplar, maintains a happy balance and happy parishioners</span>.</div>
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<br /></div>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-31441132436183599482012-05-10T16:39:00.000-04:002012-05-17T01:12:50.180-04:00CONVERSATION - BETTER THAN E-MAIL!The NY Times recently ran an opinion piece "The Flight of Conversation", decrying the substitution of electrical and digital impulses instead of the human voice from a human face. It made me think: What were some of the noteworthy conversations in which I participated? <br />
1. With Jim Colbert, Iona Prep '38 classmate: On an autumn day in one of our high school years, we listened to long playing 33 records, discussed G.K.Chesterton, Graham Greene, Romano Guardini. Chesterton's poem about Don Juan of Austria stirred up our interest with its martial atmosphere and the satisfaction we felt at the turning back of the Muslims. This turned our attention to how North Africa, Constantinople, and Spain were conquered by Muslim armies.<br />
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We, enthusiastic Catholic young men, were humbled by Greene's depiction of the "whisky priest" in his "The Power and the Glory". We then discussed other portrayals of the conflict between good and evil. From "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoyevsky, I brought up the scene where one brother says, "How awful the man who begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends up with the ideal of Sodom". The other brother responds, "Even more terrible is the man who ends up with the ideal of Sodom, while still in his heart is the ideal of the Madonna, strong and vibrant”. The conversation was lively and coherent.<br />
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For later in life, the conversations I had with Jim Colbert, MD over the years furnished food for thought and more words, perhaps with modifications and additions.<br />
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2. With Ms. Ilah McDermott, elderly, yes, elderly, parishioner of St. Thomas More parish, in whose parish house I was in residence for my twenty years as an official in the Archdiocesan Chancery. Ilah, a devout Catholic, lived around the corner from the church with her mother and daughter. She was the proprietress of Wakefield Young Books, on the gold coast of Madison Avenue in the East 60s. Early in life, she had run a book shop on a Cunard ocean liner. At a stop-over in Tel Aviv, she fell in love with a British Marine captain. They married and lived happily for a while. Then he contracted tuberculosis and turned bitter against life, Ilah, and God. Despite all that, Ilah had a fund of happy stories and was a stimulus to listeners to respond in kind.<br />
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In her travels, Ilah had met one Meg Campbell, a Methodist, who decided to become a Catholic. Ilah turned her over to me. After instructions, I received her into our Church. This was convenient as she was in New York on vacation from her home on the Isle of Canna in the Inner Hebrides, off the West Coast of Scotland.<br />
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I was their guest on Canna on two occasions. Meg’s husband, John Campbell, the Laird of Canna, was a Catholic and knowledgeable about the history of the Hebrides. Meg was an expert on the flora and fauna of the islands. On a visit, I had discovered, in the mansion’s library, a diary of Father Allan McDonald, pastor of the nearby Isle of Eriskay (Check him out in Google). From the diary, I passed on stories to Ilah and Meg, (the Laird knew them all) of sick calls across turbulent seas, taking a devastated widower back to the rectory on Eriskay, and Father Allan’s organizing the fishermen and pressuring the English government to build a breakwater, providing a safe harbor for the fishermen. <br />
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One of the best stories: Father Allan bringing Holy Communion to a pair of elderly sisters. Fog and pelting rain were inappropriate accompaniments to the coming of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. On arrival at the sisters’ cottage, Father Allan saw that their cow had been brought into the parlor to protect it from the storm. It appeared to be sick. After Holy Communion, one of the ladies offered a cup of tea to Father Allan. “Would you like some milk for your tea?” The diary reads: “I looked at the sick cow and said, ‘No. I’ll have it plain’”. Nights of conversations at Canna linger long in memory.<br />
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3. A classic non-conversation: As a graduate student at Catholic University, I was crossing the campus one evening in the late forties and fell in step with Monsignor Joe Fenton. F “What are you reading these days?” HB “Theological Studies, an article by John Courtney Murray, SJ.” F “Oh, that stuff. Right on the edge of heresy.” HB “Murray is very much aware of the old Catholic view that the Church should dominate the state, where possible. But that just doesn’t work in a democracy like ours.” F “Who says so? And if you are serious and reject that centuries old tradition, well, you’re a heretic yourself.” HB “Good evening, Doctor Fenton. Sorry we did not have time for a conversation.” There had been no conversation. Two decades later in Vatican Council Two, Doctor Fenton and Cardinal Ottaviani. Both opposed most of the advances made by the Council. John Courtney Murray, SJ, initially barred from the Council, was chosen by Cardinal Spellman to be his theological advisor. Murray was the architect of the Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom. He was a significant figure in persuading the Council Fathers to adopt this Declaration. His conversation proved fruitful.<br />
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I have been intrigued by searching through my memory and finding speeches and personalities that have remained in place over the years. I shall try to continue this chain of memories in future blog posts. What makes a conversation memorable? What turns words into a conversation?Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-58911996473485891532012-04-14T22:05:00.000-04:002012-04-14T22:35:15.887-04:00“POETS IN A LANDSCAPE”<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: 207.0pt; text-align: center;">
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As the hopefully named Celestial Express crosses the last fringes of the plains before heading up into mysterious mountains, we, passengers in the caboose, look back to bring with us into another dimension of existence, the memories of the places where we have dwelt or have visited, the men and women we have encountered, the events and happenings that exceeded our expectations. Images, memories, and personalities can flicker and fade. But a cherished book can bring a welcome renewal of its initial delight. Each time we change residence, we dispose of many books that have outlived their relevance to ourselves or to our times. As I disposed of scores of books over the years, one volume always caught my eye and was saved for another day: “Poets in a Landscape” by Gilbert Highet, Knopf, 1957, 267pp.</div>
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Highet, a Scotsman and distinguished professor at <city w:st="on">Columbia</city> in ancient Greek and Roman history, captures in this volume, the love he had for <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Italy</place></country-region>, its people, and poets. His prose suggests the swift, silent flow of the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Mincius</placename> <placetype w:st="on">River</placetype></place> near Vergil’s birthplace and the springs of Clitumnus, where the river of that name originated, - to steal some of Highet’s words and rhythms - “not in a cascade from a rock or the overspill from a lake, but from a kind of miracle from the flat earth itself”. It is there that Propertius lived. Highet devotes five lucent pages to a description of the springs and the surrounding worlds of nature, his own reflections and those of Pliny, a contemporary of Propertius.</div>
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Seven poets and the seven landscapes, where they lived and whence they distilled their poetry from the lives, personalities, and ecologies that they encountered, are presented in bright and effortlessly read prose. Highet weaves historical and linguistic contexts into the stories and accomplishments of each poet. Propertius, a likely subject to begin with, was born around 50 BC in a small town near <city w:st="on">Assisi</city> in <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Umbria</place></state>. The region suffered much in the civil wars that followed the death of Julius Caesar. The people of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Umbria</place></state> spoke a language different from their neighbors, neither Latin nor Etruscan but a dialect of Oscan. Although high-minded Romans tended to look down on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the people of <state w:st="on">Umbria</state> as on a peasant level, several of the most eminent Roman poets came from <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Umbria</place></state>. Highet’s comments help in understanding a poem by Propertius about his origin and the cause of his distress at the death of a kinsman.</div>
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Propertius captures the dramatic differences of character between two women featured in his poems. Cynthia was a part of the high society of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Rome</place></city>, beautiful, well educated and herself a poet. She was the center of Propertius’ life, hard and cruel to each other, perhaps an embodiment of the 1940’s pop hit, “You always hurt the one you love”. Propertius had days and nights of happiness together with her that alternated with periods of doubt and anger on both sides. Cynthia would use Propertius’ intense desire mixed with genuine love as a weapon by withholding its physical expression. Cynthia’s occasional bouts of drinking and casual infidelities would torture Propertius, as she knew they would. Propertius would respond by his own infidelities. Rebuffed by Cynthia, Propertius flees being alone; he invites “Phyllis on the <place w:st="on">Aventine</place> – when sober, unattractive; charming drunk. Then there is Teia – lives near the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Tarpeian</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Park</placetype></place> – a lovely thing but hard to satisfy.” He sets up a threesome in his garden. “A <place w:st="on">Nile</place> boy played the pipes, Phyllis the castanets, we scattered simple roses for our scent.” In the midst of this heady scene, Cynthia burst through the garden gate. In a torrent of wild language and physical violence, she sends the girls fleeing and reduces Propertius to an abject figure, seeking Cynthia’s forgiveness. Curiously, in this pre-Christian period, she sets up conditions “if you wish absolution for your sin…” Perhaps an intrusion by a later translator! Cynthia</div>
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savors her victory; Propertius, a melancholy defeat caused, as much by his own lack of discipline as by her passionate disposition and will to conquer. Cynthia dies and, in a more settled mood, Propertius composes an elegy that captures much of her personality<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the reasons for his addiction to her.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Propertius brings his poetry to bear on other woman, Cornelia, whose character is apposite to Cynthia’s. Cornelia is the step-daughter of the emperor, Augustus and is married to Lucius Amelius Paullus, a distinguished statesman. Unlike Cynthia, she is poised and disciplined. She dies, apparently at an early age, leaving a son and two daughters. Propertius composes an elegy, spoken by Cornelia herself.</div>
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In his elegy, Propertius puts the words of Cornelia, first about herself: she is from a noble Roman family, her father’s side was associated with the Roman legions, which “conquered <place w:st="on">Africa</place> with its wealth and power”. Her mother’s ancestors were of the renowned Libones. “Both houses stand secure in old renown.” From pride of family, she turns to herself and her own character and declares her innocence and established reputation: “write on the stone that I was one man’s bride always, pure from the wedding torch to the torch of death. Nature gave me a code of laws drawn from my blood…However harsh the standard, I can meet its test.” Cornelia, through the poetry of Propertius, turns next to praise her husband: “You, Paullus, are my consolation. In your embrace I closed my dying eyes.” She speaks of the finality of death, but urges Paullus and their children to go on, as a family, the children sensitively to accept a stepmother. She speaks of the demeanor Paullus must have for the children she leaves behind:</div>
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“Even in my ashes breathes my love for them.</div>
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You must be both their mother and their father: all</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my darlings’ weight now clings around your neck.</div>
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Kiss them when they weep, and add their mother’s kisses:</div>
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Now all our household rests upon your arms.</div>
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And if you grieve for me, they must not witness it.</div>
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When they embrace you, cheat them – dry your eyes. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enough for you, Paullus, to wear the nights with longing, </div>
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to dream<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of phantoms with Cornelia’s face;</div>
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and when you talk in secret to my portrait, speak</div>
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and pause awhile, as though I might reply.”</div>
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Noble Romans, indeed; a loving family! Propertius, poet extraordinary!</div>
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How did Propertius manage to live with Cynthia at the same time that he understood and articulated the love of Cornelia?<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-49453537809148995142012-03-09T15:06:00.000-05:002012-03-27T00:23:16.391-04:00A VIEW FROM A MOUNTAIN TOP<div style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Ninety-one years of age, sixty-six of them as a priest in New York City, provide the top of a mountain of sorts to look back over the journey, its hardships with the terrain, the relationships made along the way, and experiences that suggest a mountain ascent as a metaphor for the spiritual life.</div>
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My brother, Jeb, died last November after many years of suffering from Parkinson’s. Never losing his sense of humor or his sense of faith, he explained his evening prayer: “Dear God! My name is Jeb; not Job!” About 5 AM on a summer morning in 1944, our small family group gathered at the Larchmont train station, helped Jeb board the train, and quietly watched the train shrink in size as it disappeared down the tracks. Jeb was on his way to war, the USAF. After the war, a distinguished career in State of <state w:st="on">Maine</state> and <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">US</country-region></place> government. May he rest in peace! When I see a news article or book review that would arouse his interest as it did mine, I reached for the phone to call him to exchange comments. He isn’t there!</div>
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Some memorable scenes from sixty-six years of life of a New York priest:</div>
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St. Jerome’s, South Bronx, 1944; A police car came to the rectory for a priest (a custom in the 1940s); I climbed the ladder up the railroad bridge with the cops, walked out between the rails over the Harlem River; there he was, face down, a little boy about ten, next to the third rail! Dripping wet! Motionless. Second Avenue trains eased slowly by on each side at a mournful pace, passengers at the windows looking down at a little boy, who just went for a swim and the adventure of crossing a railroad bridge. </div>
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St.. Thomas More’s, <br />
<address w:st="on">
<street w:st="on">East 89th Street</street>, <city w:st="on">Manhattan</city></address>
, winter 1956, a bitter night. I was jarred from sleep about 1 AM by the sound of sirens and crashing glass. Fire engines had been pulled up to the building next to the church. It was thoroughly in the dark, the only light coming from the torches of the firemen and the last flicker of flames as a <place w:st="on">Niagara</place> of water thundered into the last of the fire. “This way, Father,” a fireman said, as he escorted me over the icy steps. “The third floor.” There was not much left to anoint with the blessed oils. As I knelt down, the three firemen dropped to their knees, crossed themselves, and, almost ceremonially, removed their helmets in reverent salute to the sacraments of Jesus at the passing of a life! </div>
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Epiphany, <br />
<address w:st="on">
<street w:st="on">East 22<sup>nd</sup> Street</street>, <city w:st="on">Manhattan</city></address>
, 1954: The receptionist caught me after my Sunday Mass. “There was a phone call asking that a priest be sent over. A young man was dying.” She gave me the address. “Second floor.” Young man. Probably AIDS, I thought. At the apartment, I could see beyond the open door some twenty to twenty-five individuals, some children, mostly young adults rather fashionably dressed, and some senior citizens. Soft rock was playing in the background, so appropriately. A young man asked if he could help me. I said that someone here had phoned the rectory, asking that a priest be sent. “I can’t imagine who that might be,” he replied, looking into the room. “I was the one who telephoned for the priest.” It was a neighbor across the hall. I was ushered to the bedside of the dying man - his arm around his partner - and introduced myself as the local parish priest, bringing the sacraments for the sick. “Would you care to receive the sacraments ?” His mother, sitting behind him, said, “Say yes, David”. </div>
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What to do now? Confession; Sacrament of Penance? Do you put a couple of dozen people out of the room? There is a little community here, friends – gay and straight – neighbors, the sick man, his partner. Let’s deal with the community. I explained group absolution. “I feel that each of us has at some time disobeyed God’s plan. Have we not?” Remarkably, there was a sense of all nodding their heads in agreement. “And we are profoundly sorry, are we not, for any way we have offended our neighbor in truth, justice, and compassion?” Again, a consensus of agreement. The soft rock, so appropriate, was still playing in the background. And then, “… Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins, In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”</div>
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I reached for the pix and the Blessed Sacrament. The dying man could not receive a whole host. I broke off a small piece and moved to place it in his mouth. I dropped the particle of the host. It fell into the rumpled sheets. The sick man’s partner reached for the host particle and looked up, “Father, may I give him Holy Communion?” I nodded. I had given David the last rites. His partner had given him his last Holy Communion!</div>
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In blogs to come, I shall try to share some other views seen from the mountain tops.</div>
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<br /></div>Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-60901948673829152772011-06-07T14:28:00.017-04:002011-06-16T17:09:35.083-04:00POWER? NO, THANKS. I'D RATHER HAVE INFLUENCE!Mountains have from earliest times been associated with notions of divinity and mystery. The earth is seen as exploding upward from its foundations with an impulse of life, reaching upward to jagged peaks and heights as if somehow the sky itself is being sought. Mountains would be named after particular divinities. Mount Kailash in the Tibetan Himalayas was sacred to ancient Hinduism and Buddhism. Japan's Mount Fuji, named after a Buddhist fire goddess, has a Shinto shrine near its peak. Machu Pichu in Peru is the site of temples where Incan tribes worshipped their gods.<br /><br />In Hebrew tradition there is Mount Sinai, where Moses received God's Ten Commandments. Mount Nebo, from which Moses viewed the Promised Land. The Temple Mount is sacred to Jews and Moslems. Jesus takes us to the Sermon on the Mount, the Mount of the Transfiguration, the Mount of Olives, Mount Calvary, and the mountain on whose peak Satan tempted Jesus with the aggrandizement of power.<br /><br />Matthew's Gospel (4,1-11) places an extraordinary scene before us: the devil tempts Jesus with three proposals. What will Jesus base His appeal upon? The devil: Change these stones into bread: Bread for the masses. That's the way to go. Jesus rejects that approach. The devil then suggests that Jesus base his appeal on showmanship. Cast yourself down from pinnacle of the temple without getting hurt. Jesus rejects this and thus rejects using showmanship to attract people. <br /><br />For his third temptation, the devil takes Jesus up into a high mountain and, with a 360 degree sweep of his arm, tells Jesus that He can obtain control and power of all this vision if He will embrace evil in the person of the devil. But any thirst for power and control is wholly alien to Jesus. "Come follow Me." "Blessed are the merciful, pure of heart, the seeker after justice..." The story of the wounded man on the road to Jericho; Jesus' spirited conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. At the time of His arrest, Jesus told Peter to put up his sword. "My kingdom is not of this world." This Jesus does not seek to control and command.<br /><br />Has the Church of Jesus, on occasion throughout history, forgotten that Jesus was not a command and control type? Did His Church at times warrant the picture, as Dostoyevsky portrayed it in the "Brothers Kamerazov" as the Grand Inquisitor, who fails to recognize that it is Jesus he is interrogating? Reforms of the Church in history have often succeeded in departing from abuses of power and the attempted control of others. The Protestant Reformation, in shaking off the controls of church governance and priestly celibacy, did this. Our Church is very much in need of new reform. The greatest scandal in its history, priestly abuse of young people and the failure of bishops to punish miscreants, is still very much with us.<br /><br />Astute commentators have observed that such abuse is a misuse of power - by the abusers and by tolerant bishops. Has our Church become an instrument of misused power? There almost seems to be a frenzy in the last two pontificates to centralize authority of the papacy and to aggrandize its power and control. In 2002, national conferences of bishops were stripped of authority by Rome's decree that any proclamation by a national conference without a unanimous vote must be referred to Rome. Attempted expansion of papal infallibility became evident in papal insistence on "definitively defined" items being accorded practically the same acceptance as that given to infallible statements. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, established in 1963, its members appointed by the English-speaking bishops, was high jacked by JPII with his new philosophy of translation. In 2002, members and staff of the ICEL were replaced by others appointed by Rome. Their new, heavily criticized, translation of the Roman Missal was issued in April 2010 and simply imposed on English-speaking congregations. The CEO of Caritas, an international federation of 165 Catholic charitable organizations, was Leslie-Anne Knight. According to custom, she was to be reelected for another term. However, B16 and his curia wanted a somewhat different philosophy to furnish its direction. In May 2011, Michael Roy was elected Secretary General.<br /><br />The centralizing and control-seeking form of our Church's governance raises questions. Why, with all its power and authority, did its much touted command and control authority fail to command and control an inner evil, only to be discovered by outsiders, that would destroy its credibility and trust? Why is it so different from the person and manner of Jesus? It also is different from the leadership practices of many CEOs, university presidents, museum executives, and other leaders. In writing about their leadership principles, they agree that listening is all important. Listening to employees, staff, board members, customers, and the public is accomplished through feed-back practices, meetings, and just being readily available. Constituencies must be made to feel that they share a mission, a product, that they are being heard, an overriding philosophy that they have helped to shape. One business leader, decrying command and control organizations, called attention to the difference between power and influence. "Power? Thanks. I'd rather have influence. As a person of authority, I'm a teacher-consultant more than a wielder of power".<br /><br />Is Jesus a wielder of power or is He a seeker of influence? And Jesus' Church? Does it give first place to use power to keep its authority or does it first look to contact and communicate with others and thus have influence? Like Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-38169561279900282712011-05-31T11:33:00.006-04:002011-06-01T16:46:13.235-04:00STARLIGHT AND STORM !The 90 year mark which I hit last February was a time to celebrate these long years of life and 65 years as a NY priest. Celebrations took the form of several not-so- small affairs, which provided opportunities to chat that would easily be lost in one large gathering. So we had a family party at niece Kathleen's; a priests' gathering at St. Ann's, Ossining, where I spent the first ten years of retirement as Weekend Associate; a Sunday afternoon brunch with residents of the Ruppert Co-op, 650 units of "affordable housing" of which I was the organizer; a Deering family party - children, grandchildren, and great-grand children of long gone NYFD Captain Ray Deering. Ray was a dear friend. We met through the proximity of his firehouse, a few blocks from the Chancery where I worked. Quintessential New Yorker with tons of stories, like the description of the garb of the folks fleeing a fire in Greenwich Village!<br /><br />Beginning in 2007, my blog has been reporting many colorful and fulfilling experiences I have had as a priest. I have also reported on how church governance has failed in protecting innocent priests, in installing Cardinal Law, driven from Boston by his priests and people for reassigning miscreant clergy, in a prestigious position; in removing Bishop Morris in Australia for his views on women priests and how no bishop, who reassigned abusers, has ever been removed.<br /><br />The litany of hierarchical maladministration could go on and on. But it becomes tiresome and frustrating to complain for reform, where, in the hierarchy, there is no will to listen. So I will leave the problems of church governance to others and turn to positive considerations of spirituality. I take, as a beginning theme, the title of a book, "Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest" by Julius Evola.<br /><br />The challenger of the mountain needs a discipline of the nerves and body, clear-minded courage, and an indomitable will. The mountain presents the individual person<br />with enormous beauty and mystery. Despite the menacing dangers of violent storms and avalanches, the mountain challenges persons of intrepidity and valor to mount the heights. God is our mountain. We are challenged by the mystery and majesty of God to enter into these higher realms of beauty and subsequent tranquility, but also of storms and fears. This is a land of starlight and storm!Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-34513481291859010492011-05-10T11:51:00.010-04:002011-05-14T22:50:09.063-04:00RESPONSIBILITY DIFFUSED!Since January 2007, I have posted 148 entries on this blogsite, Archangel. Some of these have celebrated bright accomplishments in the life and ministries of our Church as it tries to bring the heart and mind of Jesus to the world. Other posts have been candidly critical of many aspects of church governance. All that has been written here has come from a love of our Church and a desire that it be seen as a city on a hill. But two outrageous icons seem significant to me:<br /><br /> 1) A few years ago, full page K of C magazine ads COME FOLLOW ME; then a photo of Benedict XVI and message, "Yes, we must come and follow Benedict".<br /> 2) Latest book by Benedict XVI on Jesus - cover photo of Benedict with caption, <strong>"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD".</strong><br /><br />Heretical? I think so! Benedict twice steals the words of Jesus. Just a step away from Dostoyevsky's "Grand Inquisitor". Please, a humble Pope, a humble Church! Is this a problem? <br /><br />Leadership tips from CEOs, university presidents, et al: "Listen to employees, staff, customers, boards of directors, the public"; "Make everyone feel they contribute to the organization, its culture, its product."; "Get feed back."; "Be collegial and consultative, not command and control types." "Have meetings, present goals, discuss tactics, don't have meetings where no one or few talk." <br /><br />Some thoughts for bishops: "Be interfaith and ecumenical friendly; talk to fellow Christians, Jews, secularists, feminists, Unitarians; more importantly talk, to your fellow Catholics in Voice of the Faithful, Call to Action, and the like; don't keep them outside their church yards, meeting in Protestant and Greek Orthodox churches; send reps to their sessions; establish negotiable terms of discussion; they are not intruding on your turf - it's our turf; develop their human sense of belonging, don't think fences and walls" <br /><br />Pope and bishops can no longer afford to diffuse responsibility as has been long a deplorable habit. Bishops are judged by pope alone; a more local judge is not available! For a bishop to be brought to justice is like a NYC cab driver able to be ticketed for a violation only by a US Supreme Court justice. The procedure kills the try for justice! The mantle of judicial immunity brings its wearer to a feeling of immunity from any criticism. <br /><br />The bishops' National Review Board, consisting of outstanding Catholic lay personalities, in its February 2004 report was severely critical of the bishops: priests, but no bishop, were subject to punishment for violation of the Dallas Charter; the crisis was caused by the bishops failure to follow Canon 1395 ordering punishment, not therapy, for child abusers; damage to children was exponentially multiplied by bishops, who reassigned miscreants; bishops may well have had a conflict of interest in protecting themselves by agreeing to multi-million dollar payments and selling off church properties to pay damages; about the failures of bishops that brought grand juries and courts into the picture, the NRB report had this to say: "In the Board's view, any agreement between a diocese and civil authorities, in which the diocese gives power to the civil authorities to oversee the diocese, is a troubling infringement of the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion." History tells of many examples where Church and Pope steadfastly resisted such incursions, even to the point of deposing emperors. <br /><br />These are serious charges, indeed,and it is understandable that some bishops were angered to be so taken to task. Our own Cardinal Egan, refused to offer the customary Mass for NRB members on their official visit to NY. Egan publicly disinvited Board members for a celebratory dinner held by chance at the time of their visit. In November 2004, Egan and three other bishops tried, thankfully without success, to delay and, perhaps, block the funding of the annual audits required by the NRB. In its report, the Board cited the violation by the bishops of Canon 1277, which requires the review and approval by the diocesan finance council for certain large payments. The Board pointed out that had the bishops complied with this canon, the large expenditures would have been questioned and their reasons disclosed to view. <br /><br /> Some board members have expressed dissatisfaction with the arrogance of some bishops. Former Oklahoma Governor, Frank Keating, described some bishops as "Mafia types". Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne Burke, after her term was up, has been giving lectures on the abuse crisis and the difficulties posed by many bishops to the Board in performing the duties entrusted to them. She said on one occasion that the NRB should be dispanded. I had been invited to provide a deposition to the Board. In Washington, I spent over three hours with Board member Robert Bennett, President Clinton's attorney in the impeachment affair. His questions showed a deep understanding of the crisis. He also observed that he could not understand the hostility and arrogance of some of the bishops towards him, given the time and loss of income he had experienced from his work on the Board. Out of frustration dealing with bishops, Anne Burke and Robert Bennett, with excelkent diplomatic connections, flew to Rome and met with then Cardinal Ratzinger with whom they discussed the situation. On their return, Bishop Gregory Wilton, Chief of USCCB told them they should have had permission for this trip, stating "even bishops need permission". Burke replied, "We are not bishops!".<br /><br />With the abuse crisis very much with us, it would be appropriate to look again at the Feb 2004 NRB report. It is the most objective view to date of where accountability lay - in the past and, perhaps, into the future. Openness, not resistance , to criticism is a quality of the leadership needed to address the continuing crisis. In a recent Op-Ed in the Chicago Tribune, entitled "Can the Bishops ever be Trusted?", Anne Burke pointed out that the bishops had not followed the recommendatins of the Board. As subsequent events proved, the recommendations would have avoided some missteps that ensued and would be helpful in the future.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-18045422538253456572011-05-04T15:50:00.006-04:002011-05-08T21:10:22.159-04:00THE DANGERS OF FIXED IDEAS!Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve Bank, was opposed to government regulation of business, believing that the free market would itself self-correct its problems. The financial collapse in 2008 and continuing on proved him wrong. It was caused by many factors, chief among them, Greenspan's fixed idea that regulation was a bad policy. Regulation should be treated as a no-no, "Don't even think about it!" A fixed idea to be honored above all was at the heart of the problem.<br /> <br />Church authorities, Popes and bishops, have a fixed idea about the Church. It is almost divine, incapable of doing anything wrong. It is to be honored and preferred ahead of everything else. Priests are abusing children and bringing dishonor on the Church. Oh, no! That can't be. Anti-Catholicism is behind this talk. Lawyers are drumming up such cases to make money. This abuse simply doesn't really exist. Popes and bishops tried for a long time to deny or cover up what, to them, was unthinkable. They put concern for the Church (and self-concern) ahead of everything, even the innocence of children.<br /> <br />But it was not unthinkable. It took the press, trial lawyers, district attorneys, and grand juries to show the brutal reality. But, even then, some would hold on to that image of Church. Cardinal Bevilaqua could still hold it after the 2005 Philadelphia grand jury findings and keep miscreants in ministry. And Cardinal Rigali, after the 2011 grand jury report, announced, "There are now no abusers in ministry." A week later, Rigali was forced to remove abusers still in ministry!<br /> <br />Pope John Paul held on to his fixed idea. When Cardinal Bernard Law, poster boy for reassigning abusers, was driven from Boston by his priests and people and, perhaps, to avoid a subpoena, JPII made him Archpriest of a prestigious church in Rome with a six-figure income and retained him in vetting candidates for appointments as bishops! Cardinal Bevilaqua and Pope John Paul II still "didn't get it", still maintained the fixed idea "Put the Church ahead of everything, including innocent children and, now more recently, ahead of falsely accused priests".<br /> <br />And now, Cardinal Rigali, under fire from press and the public for his mismanagement, was appointed on April 18 by Benedict XVI to be his special representative at a ceremony on June 18, 2011 honoring St. John Neumann in the Czech Republic. What is this all about? Does Benedict not understand how the faithful and the public will interpret this accolade for Rigali? Does he care? Does Benedict misunderstand child abuse as John Paul did when he rescued Cardinal Law from Boston? Do these two popes and two cardinals still accept the fixed idea at the heart of the problem: "My Church preferably right, but right or wrong, my Church!" <br /><br />There is solid reason to think that the two popes "still don't get it". John Paul rewarded Cardinal Law, who exponentially multiplied the numbers of damaged children by reassigning abusers. Benedict conferred a special mission and honor on Rigali at the very time Rigali is shamed by the Philadelphia grand jury and calls for his resignation are being made. How unfortunate it is that these popes, with their fixed idea of a glorious and beneficent Church, can honor two cardinals, who, however unwittingly, caused injury to thousands of children. Both popes apologized for the sins of abusing priests. But the bad personnel management by many bishops has invariably been described by both popes in using the passive voice: "The matter was badly handled!" The harsh reality must be faced: the sins of abusive priests are outrageous; but the $2 billion of the faithful's contributions were paid out for settlements and court judgments for mismanagement by many bishops. When popes and bishops dispel the old Church-protective fixed idea, the way is open for salutary reform.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><blockquote></blockquote>awMsgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-18581831150637323182011-04-15T14:09:00.005-04:002011-04-17T22:24:32.069-04:00IS IT A CITY ON A HILL?The landscape on which our Church is situated is like a fog-shrouded moor in a Victorian novel. The lights have gone out at the top. Leaders in finance, education, and government tell how important it is to listen. To employees, management, board members, customers. One CEO favors large meetings because, he says, you have more people to listen to, who may come up with creative thinking. Being a leader involves having a vision of goals, communicating that vision to others, and instilling in others the notion that they have a real part in shaping the culture and the end product of the enterprise.<br /><br />Our Church is not in a listening mode. It tells practicing Catholics, like those in Voice of the Faithful, Dignity, and Call to Action to go away. They are placed outside our walls. Please get off our turf. We are a command and control institution; not a voice that shares, accommodates, and persuades. We don't have to listen; we have the truth. The Vatican, with its appetite for control, increasingly centralizes church activities the better to dominate them. A few years ago, national conferences of bishops were emasculated by being required to show unanimous consent to authorize something in their own name; otherwise it must be refered to Rome. Under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the old magisterium of the theologians has become the magisterium of the pope. This was a naked effort to broaden the scope of papal infallablity and it was used to disarm liberation theologians and saintly bishops like Romero of El Salvador, Arns of Brazil, and Sam Ruiz of Mexico. The Vatican a few years ago dismissed the board and staff of the English translators of the Missal and replaced them to change the direction of the translations. Opponents of the new English translation of the Missal in the US, South Africa, and Ireland are simply not heard. International Caritas has its CEO changed to accomodate a new direction of policies. <br /><br />B16 has had his share of gaffes: a speech in Regensburg that angered Muslims; upsetting the Jews by reaching out to the Lefebre schismatics, one of whom denied that the Holocaust ever occurred. More recently, the CDF issued an announcement that placed pedophila and ordination of women as having equal gravity. This pairing created an outcry. And finally, the beatification of JPII is coming on express tracks in May. He is the pope who placed Cardinal Law as rector of Rome's St. Mary Major's Basilica with a six figure income after Law had been driven from Boston by his priests and people for his history of reassigning priests who abused the young. After meeting with US cardinals in Rome in the fall of 2002, JPII declared that the Church would help society in addressing the abuse problem. He seemed not to understand that the abuse problem had been brought to the attention of the Church by secular society in the persons of the press, district attorneys, and trial lawyers.<br /><br />With the Church enshrouded in a fog-draped moorland, I shall turn my future blog notes to the brighter lights of some experiences and personalities I have encountered as a NY priest for some sixty-five years.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-37693012427122021862011-04-01T14:34:00.004-04:002011-04-03T23:12:57.869-04:00GOVERNANCE IS THE PROBLEM!The Philadelphia Grand Jury report of February 10, 2011 was profoundly upsetting to the public and to the Catholic community. Cardinal Rigali had pledged, together with all the other US bishops, to abide by their 2002 Dallas Charter, which required dismissal from ministry of any priest with even one credible allegation of abuse. This Grand Jury had found that a number of such priests were still in active ministry in Philly. Cardinal Rigali, in response, declared that no such abusers were still in ministry. Six days later, he removed twenty-one. Three priests and a lay teacher were charged with abuse and arrested. Monsignor William Lynn, Vicar for Clergy, was charged with endangering the welfare of children and was arrested. Will he be a sacrificial lamb to save the cardinal whose policy he followed?<br /><br />The report also describes a similar Grand Jury report in 2005, which pointed out alleged abusers. But they could not be prosecuted because of statutory limitations. It had been thought that the 2005 report would have been a wake-up call. The 2011 Grand Jury found it otherwise and lodged severe criticism against Cardinal Rigali and his predecessors, Cardinals Bevilaqua and Krol, in that they knew of the abusers but did not oust them from ministry.<br /><br />Both Grand Juries have indicated that the motivation of archdiocesan officials in removing or reassigning an alledged abusing priest lay in the danger of scandal. There appears no reference to possible danger to children as a cause of concern. Investigations by Church authorities as to what went wrong in Philadelphia will be anxiously awaited.<br /><br />I suggest that the underlying problem to be addressed is one of governance. Not only have acts of abuse been covered up and miscreants secretly reassigned. The real cause is constantly covered up. It is not acts of abuse. It is the failure in governance of those bishops who did the cover ups and reassignments of miscreants. This cause is constantly pushed aside. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have invariably used the passive voice when it comes to who caused the problems. "The problem of priestly abuse was badly handled." "Priestly" is used; but "badly handled by bishops" has never been said by our two popes, to my knowledge. Not one cent of the $2 billion paid out was for the sins of priests, but in every case of court judgment or settlement, payment was for mismanagement by a bishop. $2 billion! JP II showed profound misunderstanding of the crisis in taking Cardinal Law, driven from Boston by his priests and people and, perhaps, to avoid indictment and installing him to a prestigious church in Rome with a six figure salary and a position on the entity that selects bishops. Law was poster boy for secret and multiple reassignments of miscreant clergy. He was protected and honored by JPII, who is now on the express train to beatification.<br /><br /> The bishops'own National Review Board understood the real causality that escaped mention by two popes. They used these words: "bishops engaged in massive denial."; "general lack of accountability of bishops."; "serious failings of some bishops caused the exercise of state authority over Church matters."; "the bishops'attempt to deflect criticism from themselves onto individual priests." This harsh criticism by the NRB angered many bishops as e.g. Cardinal Egan, who attempted to stop NRB funding at one point and explains his hostile attitude to them on their visit to NYC.<br />Board members showed their displeasure with the non-cooperation of many bishops: Chairperson Frank Keating, former governor of Oklahoma, termed them "Mafia types". His successor, Ann Burke, former Chief Justice, Illinois Supreme Court, on completion of her term, went on lecture tours, describing how many bishops interfered with their mandated work. I was invited to give a deposition before the NRB. In Washington, I was interviewed by Board member Robert Bennett, President Clinton's personal attorney. He candidly complained to me about his irritation at giving up time and income only to be met by anger from some bishops.<br /> <br />The hostility of so many bishops to criticism may be related to their immunity under canon law from judgment or supervision by anyone less than the pope and his CDF. When have we ever seen the pope crack down on a bishop for the mismanagement, which the pope himself described in nameless passive voice? When Dublin Archbishop Martin persuaded some bishops to resign for their involvement in the crisis, Pope Benedict refused to accept their resignations. Don't anyone step on my turf!<br /><br />In the view of many, the Vatican's appetite for control seems excessive. JP II in his Synods of Bishops diminished the collegiality of bishops, so encouraged by Vatican II.<br />The USCCB was hamstrung, I think it was in 2002, by papal decree that decisions of national conferences had to be unanimous to have force. Otherwise, to Rome. Control is the name of the game. Rome hijacked the ICEL after decades of its work, appointed new members and imposed a questionable translation of the Roman Missal on the English-speaking faithful. Caritas, an international agency, of which our CRS is a part, was to have its highly regarded chair, a Ms. Knight take another term, as was customary. The Vatican made a different appointment. JP II, in his effort to expand papal control, tried, according to some, to expand the scope of infallibility by introducing a new phrase: the "magisterium of the Church". <br />In addition to reducing the clericalism and centralization of Church authority now abounding, a new way of thinking might well lead to an invigorated Church. Example: In November 2002, JPII and the US cardinals, after their meeting in Rome,issued a statement, which among other items, declared that "priestly celibacy" had nothing whatever to do with the abuse crisis. Obviously, an attempt to defend priestly celibacy at all costs! No studies had ever been made. But they had the conclusion. Very much like the time of Galileo. Church authorities had the Bible stating that the sun stood still. No need for research and study! Galileo was wrong! A priori thinking has its place. But it is no substitute for research and experience. Many feel it is too prevalent in Vatican thinking.<br /><br />These thoughts are to encourage policies and thinking that can be helpful as we try to wend our way through today's maze. Back to the simple Christian faith; remove the encumbrances that block the view of Jesus. Just off the top of my head, indulgences and canonizations. How about some other examples? What do you think of the above observations? Other thoughts?Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-44170893764469601722011-03-18T10:26:00.003-04:002011-03-18T15:44:16.993-04:00NINETY YEARS - AND COUNTING!February 7 was a milestone birthday - ninety years of age! I give thanks to the Almighty God for these lively years of life in a world of some dark clouds but an abundance of sparkling stars. I give thanks for sixty-five years as a priest of New York. It has been a fascinating journey with a multitude of enriching relationships, beginning with Harry Theodore Byrne and Marie Whelen. Dad is remembered for his buck and wing dance, his songs from Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore", and from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", "I had as lief not live, as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself." There was on the daily breakfast table, a box of corn flakes with a graphic of a slender woman, labeled "The Sweetheart of the Corn". I took it as an icon of my mother.<br /><br />Brothers Bill and Jeb followed me at two years intervals, and then Mary, five years later. She was born in St. Elizabth's Hospital. On a visit to see the new family member, I recall, seeing out the window, the George Washington Bridge, then in construction. It was 1930. Mary died in 2003 in Calvary Hospital. By her side then, I could see out the window the Throgg's Neck Bridge. Bridges as metaphors at the beginning and the end of her life! <br /><br />Great experiences at Murray Avenue School and Mamaroneck Junior High School and then at Iona Prep, lunchtime visits to the Blessed Sacrament. As altar boy at St. Augustine's, the tulip tree outside the sacristy window is a fragrent memory. So, too, sacristan Sister Jean Imelda! As a boy, I delighted in the high Masses, afloat in incense smoke, and the funeral Masses, three priests in solemn paces. Dignity, solemnity, reverence, then the jaw-dropping "Dies irae" with its soaring "tuba mirens spargens sonem per sepuchra regionem". And as the body is led down the aisle, "In paradisum deducant te angeli". Monday evenings with the Miraculous Medal devotion, its incense smoke, the "Tantum ergo sacramentum" and the direct sense of adoration were compelling, indeed. The only dark clouds in these early years relate to the Sacrament of Penance. Our parish priests were exemplary. Their example led me to this vocation. But they and most confessors in those early years were not helpful to boys as they experienced puberty. Ordinary experiences of a boy's developing sexuality incurred a sense of sin towards what was thoroughly natural. Confessors with a Jansenistic fear of sex reinforced that sense of sin by giving absolution and failing to point out the lack of any sinful quality in these normal functions. Silly advice was sometimes given. "Take cold showers; read spiritual books." Hey, padre,that don't work.<br /><br />During the years of Cathedral College and St. Joseph's Seminary, we lived in a context of Catholic intellectual coherence. We heard Fulton Sheen's Catholic Hour on Sunday radio. In our reading we encountered G.K. Chesterton, Martin Cyril D'Arcy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Courtney Murray, and an array of French intellectuals: Jacques Maritan,Francois Mauriac, and Leon Bloy. Seminary experience was fruitful as to theology and liturgy. The strong statues of Peter and Paul in the chapel delivered a message, that was unforgivably lost when the statutes were taken away and a Madame Tausad's-like wax-work images were installed and the colorful scenes within the apse were painted over with blank white, yes, blank white.<br /><br />First indications of leadership failure came to us seminarians from the performance of two professors,one sadly incompetent, the other, I believe, certifiably afflicted with a personality disorder. Complete failure on the part of leadership was evident in the lack of evaluation, no effort to seek student reaction, and no professional decision-making to explore reasons for terminating them. Aside from these two, our seminary professors were splendid. <br /><br />Twenty years service in the NY Chancery followed three years of graduate study in Canon Law at Catholic University. Each of these chapters would require too much computer ink and blog space, as also would my years as pastor at St. Joseph's, E. 87th St. and Epiphany at E. 22nd St. On retirement at 75 in 1996, I served as Weekend Associate at St. Ann's, Ossining, a remarkably happy tour with a great congregation and pastor.<br /><br />Now, in retirement, I have been working as a canon lawyer with priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. My earlier happier vision of our Church has become highly critical. My last post (February 28) described the unjust dismissal of an extern priest from ministry by a bishop, who also defamed him. And no appeal! This case, other examples, and a wide knowledge of the sex abuse crisis has lead to my views as to the causes of the crisis and the reforms of church structure that are needed. In my next blog post, I shall attempt to describe these.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-86809796990875925232011-02-28T15:18:00.007-05:002011-03-02T22:06:17.925-05:00THE DALLAS CHARTER - PLUSES AND MINUSESJustice is the force that keeps a community running peacefully through the whole forum of human activity. Government is charged with providing the protection of individual and corporate rights and interests by the rule of law. Government through its courts insures that the laws will be just and that those laws will be administered and enforced in a just manner. Each form of government has a judiciary component to insure that justice prevails within its jurisdiction. There are courts for towns and villages, counties, and states. Where federal law relates to the entire nation, district courts,circuit appellate courts, and a single Supreme Court insure that justice is maintained in the federal jurisdiction.<br /><br />The Church has its structure and function of government. It, too, must assure the rule of law; and that the law, itself, and its administration is justly carried out. Over the centuries, church laws have been formulated and, in the face of their multiplicity, codified, most recently, in 1919 and 1983. The Code of 1983 deals comprehensively with relationships in the Church towards others, property, and the sacraments. There is an entire section dealing with punishments and processes to insure respect for truth and for justice. However imperfect it is and, indeed, it has many imperfections in content and administration, it is, none the less, comprehensive in its agenda for Church life.<br /><br />In the spring of 2002, the abuse crisis burst on the Church and on society. The US bishops hastily gathered in Dallas in June of 2002 to respond to the crisis. They fashioned, with only a couple of days discussion, the Dallas Charter, a set of policies and practices to insure the protection of children. These have been judged successful in achieving their goal. But a serious flaw lay in its failure to protect the rights of priests. Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ severely criticized the Charter for this. (AMERICA,6/21/2004) Without going into the details, which are available in the article, it must be noted that the Charter established the bishop as arresting officer, procurator, judge, and appellate bench.An absurdity as to jurisprudential thought and history! No practical avenue to appeal a bishop's decision is available.<br /><br />It soon became apparent that some bishops, perhaps embarrassed by the role of many bishops causing the crisis by secret reassignment of miscreants, may have been too quick in removing a priest from ministry. An example: Father X, an extern, had been working effectively in a parish. A woman had been stalking him for years to destroy his ministry. Through another diocese, she tried to locate him. That diocese wrote to the Metuchen NJ diocese so Ms. Z could contact X. The Metuchen bishop misread that communication, thinking it a warning about X, and abruptly revoked X's faculties in a context that made X appear to be an alledged abuser. X was required to leave the rectory immediately and was paid per diem for days worked. The local pastor informed some parishioners that X could never work with children. Bishop Paul Bootkoski of Metuchen refused X and myself, his canonical advocate, a hearing for X's defense. I secured a letter from X's own bishop, who certified that Ms.Z did stalk X and was herself mentally unbalanced, and that X had been unjustly treated by a misapplication of the Dallas Charter. This was not accepted by Bootkoski, who insisted that he could revoke faculties without cause. He was not moved by the case I had prepared with sworn testimony that he had defamed X. Nor was he moved by another bishop I approached, who wrote Bootkoski to ask his reconsideration.<br /><br />Bishops can only be judged by the pope. Thus, every bishop is immune from judgment by any other bishop or bishops. Hence, the letter of X's proper bishop, which confirmed my canonical case establishing the injustice and defamation of X by Bishop Bootkoski, was totally devoid of any canonical authority and thus could be, and was, peremtorily disregarded by Bishop Bootkoski. To have the pope alone available to sit in judgment over the bishops of the world's 5000 plus dioceses is wholly disproportionate. In civil society, a multiplicity of courts is available to respond to the needs of the people. In the Church there is need for a multiplicity of judges to respond to allegations of unjust decisions by bishops. To have only the pope as a source of justice over a bishop's unjust action, especially in the new Dallas Charter cases, would be like requiring automobile owners throughout the US to purchase gasoline at a single gas station in Kansas! <br /><br />The Dallas Charter must be revisited and some appeal process established against unjust decisions made by bishops, as in the case of X. It is now nine years since the Charter was established; seven years since Cardinal Dulles pointed out that the Charter failed to acknowledge the rights of priests. I have written as a canonist to Cardinal George, President of the USCCB,and the appropriate committee chiefs in 2007,2008,and 2009. I stressed the urgency of the matter, since many priests are being unjustly removed from ministry. Replies assured me that revisiting the Charter was scheduled for 2010! The November 2010 USCCB meeting did not have it on its agenda. Nothing was done. It is outrageous that our bishops can allow their priests to be at risk over these many years as a result of their flawed Charter.<br /><br />The first draft of the Charter for the June 2002 USCCB meeting contained exactly what is now needed: an appeal panel of five with a majority of lay persons. The proposal quickly disappeared. Obviously, the bishops or the pope would not allow judgment to be made on them by lay persons, even if their priests were put in harms way. What has happened to the Church and the pursuit of justice? The Dallas Charter must be amended so that it may no longer continue to be an instrument of injustice!Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-44505402756353699222011-02-02T14:24:00.009-05:002011-02-08T16:44:17.242-05:00Adieu, Goodbye, So long - Vatican Council IIGeorge Weigel in the current "First Things" writes about the transition from the collegial ethos of Chicago's Cardinal Bernardin - "seamless garment" "common ground" "collegiality" - to the "command and control" "highly centralized Church" of John Paul II. Weigel traces back these contradictory thrusts to the Council itself, where an old guard fought against the mind-opening and Church-opening mentality of the world's bishops gathered in Council. The new Vatican II voices won, at first. But as the Church in a second spring inspired its constituency with fresh energy and orientation, some few stresses and anxieties, that always accompany change, were seized upon by those, who felt they had lost a prized franchise, and used them to regain the turf that they felt had been lost.<br /><br />Weigel, however well he described the transition from one mind-set to another, saw what was happening as quite appropriate as new stability marked the barque of Peter, while the anchors of the old culture halted progress under the new winds of change. Announcement of the pending beatification of John Paul II in May came like a victory shout at the end of a game!<br /><br />John Paul indelibly marked his 1979 arrival in the US and one of his legacies at a gathering by silently ignoring the presence of Sister Teresa Kane, as she respectfully addressed him. In subsequent documents, John Paul would speak frequently of the "complementarity" of women's role, understood by many today as "different and unequal". <br /><br />A curious phenomenon showed how JPII's actions reflected his attitude towards women and liberation theology. Bishop Sam Ruiz Garcia of Las Chiappas, Mexico - he died at 86 two weeks ago - was the champion of the disenfranchised Indians. They raised a violent rebellion against the government. Ruiz was charged with sympathy for the Zapatista rebels. But both sides selected him to mediate the conflict, which he successfully carried out. Ruiz attended all sessions of Vatican II and was influenced by it and by liberation theology, - "the preferential option for the poor" - which had captured the minds and efforts of many Latin-Americans. But, the hostility of Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul towards liberation theology was turned upon Ruiz. The pope in 1997 tried to persuade Ruiz to resign. Ruiz, strongly supported by the Mexican bishops and priests, refused. Ruiz had the Bible and catechetical materials translated into the Mayan language. He organized cooperatives of various kinds. He commissioned some 20,000 catechists to carry out a program of evangelization among the Mayans.In 2000, at the age of 75, Ruiz' required resignation was immediately accepted by John Paul.<br />[Google: Bishop Sam Ruiz for his remarkable story.]<br /><br />Among Ruiz' legacies were some 400 married deacons, engaged in conducting communion services, baptisms, and marriages. Interestingly, when a deacon died, his wife frequently continued her husband's visits and services. A custom began to grow up. In 2002, John Paul's Vatican ordered Ruiz' successor, Bishop Arizmendi, to halt all deacon ordinations, reasoning that continuing them "would be equivalent to sustaining an ecclesiastical model alien to the life and traditions of the Church." As later with Sister Kane, the presence and service of women were lost on John Paul; but the words and counsels of the Gospels to the Mayan Indians were also lost!<br /><br />It had been hoped that Vatican II, by its example and teaching of collegiality, would inspire more collegial activities of bishops. Paul VI had instituted the Synods of Bishops as a means to that end. But what may have been intended as a synod summary, became an "Exhortation" by JPII, a view of the synod through the lens of the pope. Pleas of some bishops in the Synod for Asia and the Synod for Oceania (both in 1998) to ordain married men, to insure availability of the Mass, were simply ignored. In the proceedings of the Synod for Asia, the propositions of the bishops were numbered and linked to the pope's responses. One proposition: the curia and the papal diplomatic service should be more international. JP II's response: the synod fathers expressed their gratitude for the fine work and help offered by the curia and the diplomatic service! Pardon me? A sharp conflict appeared when Japanese bishops insisted that liturgical books should be translated into Japanese in Japan under Japanese bishops and not by Japanese students in Rome.<br /><br />JP II showed a pattern of expanding centralization of the papacy. In what has been perceived as an expansion of papal infallibility is "the magisterium of the pope", growing out of what had been "the magisterium of theologians". The International Commission for English in Liturgy, made up of appointees of bishops in English-speaking countries, had been at work for over a decade. In 2002, the composition of the ICEL was overturned and new members appointed. The Vatican had decided that a new philosophy of translation was to replace the philosophy of the existing appointees of the bishops. Benedict XVI in his 2010 visit to Britain, spoke of the collegiality of the English-speaking bishops in translation since 2002! Why did he not mention that the ICEL had existed for two decades before 2002, the year that JPII sacked the original ICEL and appointed a new one compliant to his wishes. Recently, Rome has announced the publication of the new English translation of the Roman missal and its imposition on the Church in the US. The USCCB unanimously accepted this imposition despite some harsh criticism by some bishops and English language experts. A clergy campaign, "Why Don't We Just Wait", and observe an experimental use of the new missal before its acceptance, was simply ignored. <br /><br />Can as brilliant and prayerful a person as JPII fall into the trap of obscurantism? The word comes from the Latin "obscurans", meaning "darkening". It refers to the deliberate preventing of facts or full knowledge of some matter from becoming known. JPII is reported to have forbidden the discussion on serious levels of women's ordination or married priests and to have made these issues litmus tests in choosing bishops. Is this not a classic form of obscurantism?<br /><br /> Rome has been wary of a possible threat to its autonomy from a national body of US bishops, organized in 1919 as the National Catholic Welfare Conference, now the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 2002 (?), the Vatican ordered that only a unanimous vote of the USCCB will resolve an important issue, thus stripping it of an effective presence.<br /><br />Finally, JPII has shown a rather total misunderstanding of the abuse crisis. After Cardinal Law was driven from Boston by his priests and people as poster boy for secret reassignment of miscreant priests, JPII assigned him to a prestigious church in Rome with a six figure annual income and maintained him on several Vatican commissions, including appointment and governance of bishops. JPII's failure to understand the crisis was further demonstrated in his April 2002 address in Rome to the US bishops, where he said "...the Church will help society to understand and deal<br />with the crisis...". This was said against the fact that it was the secular society -its press,trial lawyers, and district attorneys - that forced the Church to see and deal with its own problem!<br /> <br /><br />JPII stopped the investigation of his friend, Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionnairies of Christ, later investigated by B16 and found living a double life of sexual excess.<br /><br />Church tradition and law had historically required a time interval before canonization proceedings could be instituted. Fifty years had been a customary interval. JPII in 1983 established a five year period, with opportunity for waiver. <br />B16 provided the waiver to begin proceedings to canonize the pope who had preceeded him. Church? Old boys club?<br /><br />Weigel in his article has seemed to have accurately signaled an end of an era, begun with Bernardin's and Vatican II's collegiality and terminated by, to use Roman, or perhaps, Germanic, imagery, a pope on horseback! JPII, with his forceful image and charismatic accomplishments, demonstrated a dramatic appetite for control and the expansion of his papal power, which hitherto have not been considered saintly characteristics.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-64848274721323990592011-01-07T15:31:00.004-05:002011-01-07T22:16:23.902-05:00PLEASE, HOLY FATHER, DON'T BLAME THE FAITHFUL!A few days before Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI presented "A Review of the Year" to the Vatican Curia. Central to that review was the sexual abuse crisis that exploded in the US in 2002 and, more recently, in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Benedict likened Saint Hildegard of Bingen's vision of Christ suffering from the sins of priests of her time to Christ suffering similarly in our time. "Christ's wounds",Benedict quotes Hildegard's vision, "remain open because of the sins of priests." He continues, "The way she...expressed it, is the way we have experienced it this year.. The face of the Church is stained with dust...We must ask ourselves what was wrong...in our whole way of living our Christian life... We must be capable of doing penance". But does the Pope have it right? Many say he does not!<br /><br />Benedict echoes the same thought of Pope John Paul II, who addressed the US cardinals at Rome in April 2002 and declared, "We must be confident that this time of trial will bring a thorough purification to the entire Catholic community..." These two popes have misdiagnosed the cause of the abuse crisis as involving the whole Church. This is not true. It is a problem of Church governance. In a control and command system, those who give the commands and exercise the control are accountable for what goes well and for what goes wrong.<br /><br />The captain of a ship is responsible for its operation and for management of the crew. So, too,stands the bishop with respect to his diocese. The buck stops there! Many bishops, when faced with sexual abuse of young people by some of his priests, covered up the miscreants and secretly reassigned them. All this, apparently, to protect the name of the Church. But those bishops violated the law! Canon 1395 orders such abusers to be punished, period. Not to be reassigned, not to be sent for rehabilitation! This is not to charge those bishops with moral fault, if, in conscience, they judged their actions to be morally acceptable. But the removal of moral fault does not remove accountability. A man, driving a car, makes a bad decision that results in the death of a pedestrian. However morally guiltless he may be, he remains, nevertheless, accountable. However morally guiltless, those reassigning bishops may have been, they remain very much accountable for the incalcuable damage to thousands of children and, ultimately, for giving dishonor to the name of the Church. Many public commentators feel that the US bishops, as a group, remain in a state of denial, unwilling to acknowledge their accountability and the humility that would be expected to accompany it. The US bishops' own National Review Board, in its report of Feb. 27, 2004 stated: "Church officials in the US rarely enforced Canon 1395. Nor have any bishops in the US been punished...for [this] failure...". The report, further, confirms the widespread public feeling that the bishops continue in denial of accountability, when it states: "The impression was created that the Dallas Charter and the Essential Norms were the bishops' attempt to deflect criticism from themselves and onto individual priests...the bishops were engaged in massive denial."<br /><br />[For 2 page summary of key points of the cited NRB report, e-mail request to me.HJB]<br /><br />A further indication that the "cover-up bishops" must be held fully accountable for the crisis is the $2 billion paid by dioceses as the result of court judgments and settlements. This money, essentially from the faithful, is not so much about deviant priests; it was paid because courts decreed or settlement meetings of lawyers declared that those cited bishops had failed to do their job and were accountable for resulting damages!<br /><br />The NRB is quite unsparing in its criticisms of the bishops. The report points to another area of canon law violated by the bishops. Canon 1277 mandates that large sums (such as payments to victims) require review and approval by the diocesan finance council. If this were done, the crisis would never have grown to such great proportions. The report also faulted bishops who allowed the civil society, in infringement of the First Amendment, to intrude on some aspects of church governance. Yet another criticism of the bishops was voiced: "To the extent that a bishop avoids consequences for himself by agreeing to provisions that impose onerous financial or operational restrictions on the diocese (multi-million dollar payments, closing some parishes and selling property to pay damages) the Board has grave concerns about the apparent conflict of interest."<br /><br />The cited NRB report then rachets accountability up to a higher level. Canon 1389 provides for a penalty for a Church official who fails to perform an act of governance. "Church officials in the US rarely enforced Canon 1395. Nor have any bishops in the US ever been punished under Canon 1389 for a failure to enforce Canon 1395." Only the pope or the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith can sit in judgment on a bishop. Is it a fair question to ask, where were the command and control figures, when these canon laws were being widely ignored? And while catastropic damages to young people and collapse of trust in the Church continued to be played out?<br /><br />The severe criticism of the bishops by the National Review Board explains why some bishops were angered, some treating Board members discourteously on their visits; four of them unsuccessfully seeking to delay and, perhaps, block the funding of the Board. The first chairperson of the NRB, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating, early on having referred to them as "Mafia types", had to resign. The second chair was Anne Burke, Chief Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court - she sharply pointed out that she was named merely "as acting Chair" - after completing her term, gave herself to lecture tours on which she was highly critical of the bishops. After that first critical report of 179 pages in Feb. 2004, little has been heard of the NRB, its annual reports now consisting of merely a few paragraphs.<br /><br />To return to Benedict's pre-Christmas talk to the members of the Vatican Curia: "Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair...the injustice that has occurred...what was wrong in...our whole way of living the Christian life... We must be capable of doing penance..." As the bishops at Dallas, in the view of the NRB,"attempt[ed] to deflect criticism of themselves and onto individual priests", do we not see Pope Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, attempting to deflect criticism from themselves on to the entire community of the faithful? Please, Holy Father, you have said "Only the truth saves". The truth is that the crisis was caused by a failure of governance! A failure by those who governed; not by failure of the governed. Those governed are the ones who have been hurt, primarily the victims of abuse, the faithful, who have paid financially for the errors of bishops and pope and have suffered profound embarrassment in the public forum, and the priests in the field, their regiment disgraced by misjudgments of its officers.<br /><br />There is a cruel irony in Benedict's calling on the faithful to do penance. The cited report of the NRB declared that Canon 212, p3 called on the faithful "to manifest...their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church". The Board gave examples of problems that would have been avoided had the laity been involved. Leadership manuals emphasize the value of two-way communication within an organization to make participants feel that they belong, are being heard and have a role in developing the culture in which they are working. Leadership experts call for meetings and wide outreach to garner feedback from board members, staff, employees, and actual and would be customers. Yet organizations like Voice of the Faithful, We Are Church, Call to Action, and others, which include faith-filled Catholics, who simply would like to be heard, are generally not only not sought, but are actually banned as intruders on bishop territory.<br /><br />This great crisis calls for bold thinking and bold action. Perhaps there is need for wider dispersal of authority to provide local sources of information and local responses, especially about child abuse. Yet John Paul II killed such a would-be instrument, when he castrated the National Conferences of Bishops by demanding total unanimity to give a Conference muscle. Perhaps, the Pope should better deploy the resources of the Church. While the abuse crisis was festering unseen, the Vatican was condemning liberation and other theologians, insisting on translating liturgical texts, such as Japanese in Rome rather than in Japan, and canonizing hundreds of saints. JP II proclaimed more saints than were canonized in the entire history of the Church.<br /><br />Our Church needs a major sit-down with new thinking, some new actors, and more restraint where ambiguity rules. Our authorities should do more listening than proclaiming, and be aware that control does not mean competence. The old actors and the old thinking have done many fine things, but, at the end of the day have caused, perhaps, the greatest disaster in church history!Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-54402130714786593572010-12-23T14:18:00.006-05:002010-12-29T14:51:14.790-05:00"Fare l'atto di presenza"Someone walks into a room; nothing noticeable occurs, only an empty chair seems to have become occupied. Someone else enters, says nothing, does nothing, but the atmosphere becomes charged; his or her presence is like a power. That is where the Italian phrase in our title has place. "An act of being present has been made!" That is what the Christmas creche trumpets. This is no commonmplace birth, however peasant the surroundings, however earthy the cow and the dog. A power figure has made an act of being present! His coming had been foretold by ancient bearded figures, wearing the tallit and teffelin. <br /><br />Later, John the Baptist, at Bethabara, a fording place where the waters of the Jordan River trickled over ancient stones, called out to prepare for the word of the Lord to be proclaimed by this infant, later grown to manhood. The widespread diversity of humanity that would later accept the message and the mission of this Messiah was indicated by those who listened to John at this crossing point of the Jordan. For centuries, caravans coming down from Moab would mix with other traders and travelers. John would have been heard by Jews, some in rough clothing, others in the silk and suede of the rich, but also Arabs from Transjordan, Babylonians with rings in their noses, copper-colored Abyssinians, and black Sudanese. Think New York subways! On the ears of these peoples would fall the words and values of this new figure, Jesus.<br /><br />And our creche scene features the song of the angels, appealing both to the simple and to the wise - the rustic shepherds from local fields and the three wisemen from the East, sophisticated and exotic. Both types in following centuries would be found among the listeners to Jesus, the processions of simple folk on the streets of El Salvador and of literary and artistic types, who found place in their art for this power figure, whose power had nothing to do with political, economic, or military might.<br /><br />Medieval and Renaissance artists in their depictions and interpretations of the creche scene frequently noted another deeper, dramatic, and mysterious feature about this power person, who had made the act of being present to us, by including, quietly and almost unnoticed, the apple from the garden of Adam and Eve, and, off to the side, a thorn bush!<br /><br />This Jesus of the creche did not saunter casually into sight; he performed an act of being present to us. In His company, we his listeners are challenged to dismiss any casual pose and to make our own positive act of being present to Him, to His values, and to His sacrifice.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-58025007536908645112010-12-11T15:18:00.006-05:002010-12-11T16:07:47.209-05:00FLY THESE SPACIOUS SKIES!Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth<br /> And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;<br />Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth<br /> Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things<br />You have not dreamed of - and wheeled and soared and swung<br /> High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there<br />I'v chased the shouting wind along, and flung<br /> My eager craft through footless halls of air.<br />Up, up the long delirious, burning blue<br /> I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace<br />Where never lark or even eagle flew,<br /> And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod<br />The untrespassed sanctity of space,<br /> Put out my hand and touched the face of God.<br /><br /> John Gillespie Magee, Jr.<br /> Killed in an aircraft accident<br /> in England, December 1941Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-58462887274346334242010-11-23T13:36:00.009-05:002011-06-14T14:48:56.458-04:00TWO CHAPELS AND A CATHEDRALMost things are well here at the O'Connor Clergy Residence. Twenty-eight priests and two bishops are moving into Shakespeare's "lean and slippered pantaloon" with assorted pill boxes to stave off the inevitable. The green trees of summer have blocked our views of the nearby Hudson River. But now that the pelting rain and strong winds of November have stripped the trees bare, the river and the dramatic Palisades can be seen. Looking to the south at night, the George Washington bridge and its lights show the connection to New Jersey. The bridge is a metaphor for a different kind of bridge on which we make our way. And New Jersey is not to where it leads! <br /><br />The residents here represent a mix of ministries that we, New Yorkers, have followed over the years: parish priests, educators, ecclesiastic bureaucrats, hospital, Army, and Air Force chaplains. These men have many stories and accounts of adventures that are, frequently, more than twice told. But that works out well. Fluid seating at meals provides the hope that at least one at the table has not heard your own colorful and fascinating stories.<br /><br />As you drive in through the gates, a shrine to Our Lady provides an appropriate welcome. Shrubs and flowers are well maintained. Kitchen and dining room provide excellent food and service. An exercise room with treadmills and bicycles is at hand. We have a small library; a local public library is a few blocks away; a major library is a few miles away at St. Joseph's Seminary. Finally and importantly, there are three settings for our prayers.<br /><br /><strong>A small chapel </strong>, the first of our three prayer settings, is the locale for concelebrated Masses each day at 7:15, 9, and 11. The intimacy of the small space is an excellent theater for private prayer. The concelebrated Masses suggest the fellowship of the priesthood that binds us together in our approach to Jesus. The rich colors of the stained glass windows give a dramatic dimension to the figures of Jesus and the eleven apostles, as at the table they are engaged in what we do centuries later at the altar. Together at the daily Mass, we are also part of a history that goes back twenty-one centuries, essentially bound in to the substance of what Jesus bequeathed to us, but ready to move ahead with new methods of communication, distribution, and structure and with new attitudes towards relationships.<br /><strong><br />A second chapel</strong> furnishes us with a somewhat different stage for our prayer. It is larger than our Mass chapel, with about 120 seats as contrasted to 25 for the other. It is used when our residents come together for a joint exercise, as in administering the Sacraments of the Sick, spiritual retreat exercises, and special instructional matters. The larger size is suggestive of a parish church, similar to those in which most of us have served. It suggests the wider community envisioned by Vatican Council II, in which the defining characteristic is Baptism in the Lord. That is the basis of this new community in which lay people participate and feel part of the enterprise and essential to its flourishing. All are made one by baptism as St. Paul proclaimed - men and women, married and divorced, gay and straight; the basic qualification is one's humanity. Business corporations, universities and colleges and wherever people management is a component seek transparancy, flow of information to all, and to make all feel that they are truly part of the body organic.<br /><br /><strong>A third theater or stage</strong> for our prayer at the residence is not a chapel, but a cathedral. I open a door in my suite and step out on to a deck. The dome is the sky above, sprinkled with diamonds at night and with hundreds of cloud sculptures and paintings by day. Here is where, in solitude, mystery is encountered. The river and the Palisades to the west remind us of how those cliffs were carved in paleolithic times by ice, water, and wind. In that time sequence, we are a mere blip. Even the Hubell telescope could not find us, a tiny dot in the infinite reaches of space. Does it go on and on and on? Is there an edge, a wall, then what? This is the mystery, at the edge of which we pray!<br /><br />After sixty-five years as a priest of New York, the O'Connor Residence is a great harbor into which come many interesting colleagues. One of us has said, "In the years I have been here, I have never heard a harsh word from residents or from staff." Despite a troubled world and a Church in crisis, we each try to put the pieces together in our own personal jig-saw puzzle. We are thankful that we have here three places to pray before a host of mysteries - a Mass chapel, a parish-like church, and a cathedral not built with hands!Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-86634889268759225632010-11-04T14:36:00.008-04:002010-11-09T11:20:09.711-05:00STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN !Large scale departures of Catholics from the faith have been the subject of the Pew research organization, articles by Cathleen Kaveny and Peter Steinfels in the October 22, 2010 COMMONWEAL, and the recent study "American Grace" by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. Many of those who left have established new religious identities with Episcopal, Lutheran, Pentecostal, and other Christian bodies. The numbers and causes of these departures and new affiliations, not the least of which has been the monstrous sexual abuse scandal, are appropriate subjects for study and analysis by our bishops, think tanks, and whoever. In this posting, I will examine what, in my estimation, is a substantial cause of alienation and, what, simultaneously, indicates a remedy: the institutional and personal refusal of the members of the Catholic hierarchy to "listen" and the remedy,"start listening".<br /><br />An iconic image of the problem: Pope John Paul II in 1979 as he refused to listen to Sister Teresa Kane, when she rose to speak. As a seemingly fourth person of a new divinity, the pope failed to acknowledge her as a person, did not respect her as a baptized child of God. John Paul, also showed his isolation from the real world, when, in the smoke and mirrors of clericalism, he assigned Cardinal Bernard H. Law, driven from Boston by his priests and people for reassigning miscreant clerics, to a prominent church in Rome and continued him in church-governing positions! John Paul simply did not listen to Sister Kane, to the people of Boston, to the world.<br /><br />After the November 2 election that devastated the Democratic Party, President Obama<br />declared that the governing party had simply not listened to the people.<br /><br />Each Sunday's Business Section of the NY Times presents the CORNER OFFICE, an interview with a distinguished leader: a CEO from the business, academic, or various professional worlds to explore LEADERSHIP in their experience in corporate and people management. What is revealed about LEADERSHIP qualities is dramatically relevant to governance in the Church by pope, bishops, pastors, and others exercising church authority. They may have authority in faith and morals. This does not carry with it expertise in corporate management, people management, or public relations. Church authorities can surely benefit from the voices of experience in these worlds. As the following selected excerpts are reviewed, a comparison or a contrast can be made between the recommended qualities and the readers' personal experience of church governance, favorable or unfavorable, as it may be:<br /><br />1. CEO, advertising, male: You learn a lot from the worst managers, the "command and control" types. One must make people feel they are part of a team. They need to feel their voice is heard and feel completely fearless in having a conversation with me... The ability to thrive in ambiguity is important. How people feel with something that is not black or white, but grey.<br /><br />2. CEO, business, male: Leadership and communication are the same thing. We believe in communicating everything to every single employee. We're big on what we call the whole brain concept, which is simply to eliminate silos. We probably have more people than we need at each meeting. But, we get a lot of innovation that way... We talk a lot about a person's wake, like a boat's wake. Most people's wake is much larger than they can imagine as is the leader's... We talk about and emphasize foundational principles and how we apply them, and how that makes us cohesive and act as a team.<br /><br />3. Hedgefund founder, female: Every year, I ask individuals to write a 360 on everyone in the firm, including me. Then, an outsider, a management coach, synthesizes things and says, "These are the directional comments that people have about you." ... At our all hands meetings, every six weeks or so, I tell people what is going on in our different areas."<br /><br />4. CEO, info services based in the Netherlands, female: Peoples, cultures are different. How they interpret what you've said to them, and how you interpret what they have said, and the rules of engagement about how you are going to make a decision is very important. Remember, as a boss, everything you do is evaluated.<br /><br />5. CEO, business, male: Are employees and associates <em>more product oriented than customer oriented? </em>Have I succeeded in making employees feel that they are a real part of the enterprize?...I'd like to ask once a year, anonymously, would you like to work with me for another year? Do you have faith in me? Employees, the board, shareholders, customers, my associates?<br /><br />6. Ms. Drew Faust, President, Harvard University: Understand the context in which you are leading: an organization to which people have a loyalty and which has had a long history of loyalty. This can cause resistance to change. A willingness to change is to be sensitively cultivated. There are different constituencies, each to be dealt with differently. Communication with these constituencies is important to develop a sense of identity and cohesiveness of the whole, wherein each dean or school comes to appreciate the benefits from the larger organization in which it plays a part....If people feel that they are being listened to and their views are being taken into account, decisions will be more graciously accepted. Differences cannot be allowed to degenerate into enmities. Belief in the organization by its participants is essential. It can be secured only if they are being invested in the institution, being made to have a stake in it, as well as being asked to respond to its needs. We are in the people business!<br /><br />My brief comment: Pope and hierarchy appear as "command and control" types, viewing outside suggestions and recommendations as invasion of their turf and more concerned about "product" than "customer". Neither seeking nor hearing the voice of the "customer" in a litany of issues, John Paul II, in 1998, in the judgment of some theologians and canonists, has attempted to reshape the "product" by adding a new category of doctrine: "whatever is proposed definitively as part of the magisterium". This has been criticized as an effort to widen the concept of infallibility and as part of the papacy's continuing effort to centralize and increase authority, power, and control. Is it another example of "control and command" governance?<br /><br />A thoughtful recommendation: Pope and bishops should immediately establish relations with Voice of the Faithful, Call to Action, and other groups of practicing Catholics. These are not invading turf, but seeking to be real parts of the enterprise. The rejection by the hierarchy of such a role for the laity may well explain why many Catholics are seeking other religious identity, where they consciously become part of the enterprise of encountering Jesus.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-77502692855076046832010-10-31T14:18:00.010-04:002010-11-04T22:19:41.666-04:00CAN ISLAM BE PEACEFUL ?Juan Williams, an anchor at NPR, was recently fired from his job because of his remarks on Fox's Bill Reilly's program that he would feel uncomfortable boarding an aeroplane with some passengers dressed in Muslim garb. NPR, very politically correct, discharged him for remarks offensive to Muslims. Curiously, the roof fell in on NPR. Journalists and others condemned his being fired by NPR. Many others expressed the same sentiments about being with Muslim-dressed passengers. The NY Times, after packaged bombs from Yemen were found on a UPS truck in Dubai and on an aeroplane at Heathrow in England, featured a cartoon figure with Muslim passengers exclaiming, "I agree with Williams". <br /> <br />NPR and the initiators of the downtown mosque near Ground Zero, Imam Rauf and developer Sharif el Gamal found Williams' remarks offensive to the Muslim community. They hold that their brand of Islam breathes peace. That message and the proposed mosque near Ground Zero drew considerable support because Rauf and el Gamal succeeded in establishing the term of the controversy as one of religious tolerance rather than as the intrusion of outsiders in this New York graveyard, affronting the sensitivities of so many. The same word or words can be used and heard differently by different audiences: balogna can refer to a cured meat or to meaningless statements, as in "a lot of baloney". "Islam" and "muslim" can mean peace through discipline and sharia law to those of the umma, the world-wide Muslim community. But for contemporary Americans, those two words immediately bring to mind the terrorists of 9/11, suicide bombers, extremist jihadists, and, in yesterday's a report of an assault yesterday in Baghdad on the Syrian Catholic Cathedral. One hundred Catholics at Sunday Mass were taken hostage by an armed group, identified as The <em>Islamic </em>State of Iraq. Thirty-seven attendees and two priests were killed: fifty-six wounded. Legitimate Iraqi forces released the remaining hostages. <br /><br />As "Islam" and "Muslim" are understood differently by different speakers, so, too, the proposed mosque will be perceived differently by different observers. Rauf and Sharif el Gamal would have observers here see it as a monument to religious freedom; but those in Muslim countries around the world will see it as a symbol of the 9/11 Muslim victory. It will be seen, in yet a third way, by many of us New Yorkers as an uninvited intrusion on the place of our communal grief.<br /><br /><br />The mosque proponents have a nomenclature problem. What is their Islam? Are they part of the "umma", Islam, the Muslim world-wide community, whose charter calls for world domination? How do they view modern Muslim nations, where there is no religious freedom, where sharia calls for amputations for thieves, honor killings, and death sentences for writings and cartoons deemed sacriligious? That is the Islam of popular understanding!<br /><br />The local mosque people are of the Sufi component of Islam, peace loving, mystical. But there are questions. As Muslims, how do they relate to the larger Muslim world? Generalities about peace-loving are insufficient. New Yorkers need to be educated on the specifics that warrant that title. Do they publicly reject sharia's death sentences for conversion or perceived insults to the Koran? Do they accept the Qu'oran's permission for husbands to beat their wives, but "not beyond bloodshed"? What qualifies a person for membership in their mosque? What is its charter and mission statement? How are jihadists excluded? Some mosque members become radicalized as has occurred here and in Europe. How is such a member expelled from the mosque, as has frequently occurred here and in Europe?<br /><br />Such questions are not asked gratuitously. New Yorkers are well aware of our peace-loving Muslim neighbors - professionals, livery drivers, grocers, and merchants. But the Charter of Islam is recorded in its Holy Writ and is exemplified in modern Muslim nations and in history. Muslim, Jews, and Christians effectively lived together in Moorish Spain with accomplishments in art, architecture, and the good things of life. But Jews and Christians were "dimmis" -"protected ones"- paying an annual tax and subject to many legal inhibitions, such as limited to riding donkeys, horses not permitted!<br /><br />In buying a house or making an investment, full disclosure is required. With Islam, not only a religion but also a form of government, with examples in its history and in the contemporary world, full disclosure of a charter and mission statement of the proposed mosque is not an inappropriate request. The two uses and two understandings of the word, "Islam" makes it incumbent on the downtown mosque people to make clear which is their "Islam" and how it differs from the other "Islam". The same name with two meanings is, to say the least, confusing.<br /><br />The necessity of full disclosure is further seen in light of statements the like of one by Abu Laban at the Ninth Congress of the Islamic Cultural Institute in 1995 in Milan: "They [westerners] accept Muslims in their midst... We, therefore, must pretend that we accept their religion and their individual freedom. But this is impossible. Islam can accept no one who does not adore Allah."Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-36660494908972383272010-10-22T15:47:00.008-04:002010-10-27T15:04:37.701-04:00SOME INTERESTING CONFLICTS !Over the years, the ink has dried; magazine pages have yellowed; key figures have died. I, too myself, am playing in an end zone. What to do with the pile of periodicals containing articles I have written? Let's have a last look at some of these which tried to understand some puzzling conflicts.<br /><br />AMERICA 2-9-85. "The American Pope" John Cooney (1984), a scurrilous book about Cardinal Spellman. Reminded me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's observation: "You can have your own opinions; you cannot have your own facts." Cooney writes with acid ink, using more nasty adjectives than subjects and predicates. His opinions are contradicted by facts. OPINION: Spellman "had a history of working against the Israeli cause."FACT: When Israel's admission to the UN was up for a vote, Spellman called on UN delegates and officials of every Latin American country to vote for Israel. Cooney says he did it to please Charles Silver, his Jewish friend, and noted that Eleanor Roosevelt did it because she "firmly believed in the justice of the cause". OPINION: Spellman guilty of "heel-dragging on the issue of race". FACT: Spellman approved and funded a delegation of priests and nuns to the march on Selma, Ala. despite Alabama's bishop's unwelcome. Cooney:"By the mid-1960s, Spellman...had to do something for the civil rights movement." OPINION: Cooney: Spellman "detested unions". FACT: On arrival in NY, Spellman announced that all construction by the archdiocese would be by union labor. In May 1947, he announced a $25 million building program. The Building and Construction Trades Council of NY passed resolutions of appreciation. OPINION: Spellman "intended to chip away at the wall of church and state...until,it was leveled." FACT: John Courtney Murray, SJ fashioned for Vat II a new doctrine of church and state compatible with US constitution. Old timers at Vat II blocked Murray from the Council. Spellmanm brought him to Council as his personal theologian. Cooney's book is filled with distaste for Spellman and delinquent on facts.<br /><br />AMERICA,Dec. 6, 1986 "Thou Shalt Not Speak". In August 1986,the NY Chancery issued a directive that persons, who hold positions contrary to church doctrine, should not be permitted to speak at church events. NY Assemblyman John Dearie, a sterling Catholic was banned from speaking at a parish affair because he had voted for Medicaid funding for abortions. My article criticized the directive because it could cause people to vote on a single issue, ignoring other favorable actions by the candidate. Could also lay clergy open to charge of interfering in politics. Also, it is a fact of life that American voters will never elect someone whom they view as politically subservient to a religious body! Many positive responses including Governor Mario Cuomo's; some negative including Cardinal O'Connor's. Story carried in NY Times.<br /><br />AMERICA: Jan 5-12,1991 "A House Divided: The Pro-Life Movement". I described three points that divide the pro-life movement: abortion perceived as part of women's freedom,opposing contraception and abortion equally; use of excommunication to force a legislator's vote. Pro-life support is weakened if seen as part of anti-feminism, if contraception is opposed equally with abortion; if a legislator is seen as forced by a church penalty. Most comments positive; some insisted on condemning contraception equally with abortion.<br /><br />AMERICA: Oct 5, 1985. "The Supreme Court and Parochial Schools." Title 1 legislation of 1965 succeeded in allowing federal funds to parochial schools for remedial reading, remedial math, and guidance programs. It was a triumph of LBJ, who brought proponents and opponents together to overcome what had been deemed to be constitutional barriers to any such federal aid to parochial schools. For the next nineteen years, this program was successfully carried out by public school teachers coming into the parochial schools to teach the allowed subjects. In 1985, the US Supreme Court declared the program unconstitutional on church-state separation grounds. My article reviewed previous Supreme Court decisions that dealt with governmental attitudes towards religion in public and parochial schools. Some items were declared unconstitutional: prayers and Bible readngs in public schools; direct aid to parochial schools. But many governmental assistance items for parochial schools were approved by the Court: bus transportation, loan of secular text books, providing computers, projectors, etc, vouchers. NOTE: In 1997 the Supreme Court overruled this 1985 decision. Public school teachers were now to be permitted to enter the parochial school to teach remedial reading and remedial math and provide guidance programs. Church-state jurisprudence had undergone a significant change. Mr. Paul Crotty, an Epiphany Parish parishioner and now a Federal District Court judge, had argued the case successfully before the Supreme Court.<br /><br />AMERICA: Oct 2, 1999. "Courts Confused on School Choice." This article traced a changing attitude by the Court towards aid to parochial schools as different challenges were confronted: different types of voucher plans, reimbursement for required reporting expenses, computers and internet access, tax credits, sign language interpreter for a deaf student in a Catholic High School, school tuition for a blind student in a Protestant seminary. These varied cases wended their way through lower and appellate courts before arriving at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in affirming constitutionality of these practices was clearly experiencing an evolution. <br /><br />AMERICA: Dec 12, 1998. "Growing Support for School Vouchers" in educational circles and court decisions.<br /><br />AMERICA: jULY 25, 1987. "Church, State and Foster Care Children." My article reviewed the history of child placement in public and private facilities, some of which were religious. In that long history, NY legislation provided for "religion matching", which accorded priority to the wish of the child or parent regarding placement in a religious institution. Thus the child was assured of protection of his/her religious identity and of the comfort of religious symbols and devotions so important to young lives. The ACLU instituted a suit to bar religious choice and the providing of religious symbols and devotions in the facility. Catholic and Jewish opposition quickly arose. In view of the high emotions and the church-state complications, a <br />"Stipulation of Settlement", signed by NYC, Defendant in the case, and the ACLU, was accepted by a Federal District Court. Catholic and Jewish parties, having lost their case, appealed the court's decision. T Cardinal O'Connor said that if the "Stipulation" was upheld on appeal, archdiocesan congegate foster care would be withdrawn. I regret that I have not followed up this case to see how it played out.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949653926664225332.post-85440199442404291162010-10-14T15:40:00.004-04:002010-10-15T16:20:36.498-04:00A SHOWER OF DIAMONDS!Two trees at the south-west corner of our monastery-like building caught the early afternoon sun at an unusual angle. Each leaf reflected a tiny portion of the sun. The trees were transformed, appearing as though glazed by an ice storm or, as you looked again,each tree sparkled as though festooned with tiny white Christmas tree lights or as having received a shower of diamonds.<br /><br />The Christian faith is like a shower of diamonds that makes the natural things of life reflect back something of God's power as the trees in the afternon sun reflect back something of the energy and heat of the sun. The shower of diamonds, which make our lives reflect back a greater than natural brilliance, are the words and examples of the more abundant life given us by the new Adam, Jesus,the light of the world. "I was hungry, you fed me; thirsty,you gave me a cup of cold water; a stranger, you took me in; in rags, you covered me; sick, you visited me; in prison, you came to me. As long as you did these things to one of these, my least brethren, you did it to me." How remarkably simple! Each of these acts is a sparkling diamond that the Christian is to wear as it reflects back something of God's light and power. <br /><br /> Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, they that mourn, they that hunger and thirst after justice, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, they that suffer persecution for justice sake. Each of these qualities, described by Jesus in His sermon on the mount is a precious diamond, signaling the Christian's engagement to his neighbors and his fellows and, through them, reflecting back something of the mysterious life of God.<br /><br />Like the trees in the afternoon sun, the Christian receives the shower of diamonds from the words and examples of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.Msgr. Harry J. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01045288678670088353noreply@blogger.com0