Spin and projection: The alternate universe of TECSC

Spin!

After yesterday's courtroom disaster, the propagandists for The Empty Church in South Carolina (TECSC) apparently had to pull an all nighter to come up with a press release that portrayed their side in a positive light. For the sake of keeping your blood pressure low, I would only recommend reading it with A.S. Haley's accompanying commentary. Ultimately, the spinmeisters had to fall back on the tried and true tactic of making themselves look good by making their opponents look bad. The result was this gem of journalistic eloquence:

As cross-examination began, plaintiff’s attorney Henrietta Golding stood up and immediately began shouting at the professor seated in the witness chair, jabbing her finger in the air: “I think you need to tell the court where you go to church! …Or is this something you want to hide?” Counsel for the defense objected; Judge Goodstein did not intervene. “I don’t think she’s being impolite,” the judge said.

While I wasn't present in the courtroom, I think it safe to assume, based on Judge Goodstein's response, that the exchange between counsel and witness was nowhere near as belligerent as described in the press release. Hectoring, name-calling, and bullying are hallmarks of the national church and its local subsidiary. Projecting such behavior onto the attorneys representing the real Diocese of South Carolina is hardly surprising. It is very much in character for the minions of TECSC who, like their national counterparts, must continue to craft false narratives to sustain life in their alternate universe.

You might not be a particularly good journalist if you don't actually read other journalists

Mollie Hemingway

There are days when I am especially thankful to God for diverting me to seminary before I could put my bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism to work. This is one of those days.

It is becoming painfully apparent that most "journalists" today live in a world entirely alien to that of normal people. Writing for The Federalist yesterday, Mollie Hemingway, that rare specimen of a real journalist, called out snarky Washington Post reporter Chris Cizilla after he offered a vivid illustration of the alternate reality in which so many of the "mainstream media" folk live. Her article prompted clueless Religion News Service correspondent David Gibson (to whom I am no relation, as I made clear to Mollie lest she think the less of me) to pitch a Twitter fit. However, his attempt to rehabilitate his WaPo colleague and refute Mrs. Hemingway's critique had one glaring shortcoming.

Among the many interesting things displayed by these tweets, those who read my piece know that half of it was devoted to discussing the political movement to change the definition of pregnancy. Therefore, Gibson’s tweet “WaPo article seems absolutely fine. When do you think pregnancy begins? Is there a debate?” suggests that he didn’t even read my article before claiming he was unconvinced by it.

It's been 25 years, but I still remember one of the essential lessons taught in my journalism classes, that it is every bit as important to read as it is to write. An informed journalist is a particularly good journalist. An uninformed one is, well, somewhat below average.

In a Twitter fight with Mollie Hemingway, below average journalist David Gibson is way out of his league.

Observations and emendations emerging from the rogue diocese press release

The outfit calling itself "The Episcopal Church in South Carolina" is on the warpath again. Yesterday, the low country minions of Madam Oven Mitt issued a press release announcing yet another legal action against the leaders of the Diocese of South Carolina. Typical of the sleazy propaganda we have come to expect from the rogue diocese's fauxilliary bishop and his bevvy of benighted barristers, the press release attempts to create an alternate universe in which the reasonable actions of faithful shepherds acting to protect their sheep are re-imagined into illegal acts of treachery, conspiracy, and fraud. Dripping with utter contempt for all things godly, it continues to cast the legitimately elected and consecrated Bishop of South Carolina as a renegade cleric with a penchant for exceeding his authority.

While it has been reprinted verbatim on numerous web sites, I would humbly offer the following observations concerning the gross inaccuracies propagated in the press release. Perhaps some publishers might consider a few editorial emendations, just for fun.

Bishop Mark J. Lawrence

1) The Rt. Revd. Mark J. Lawrence should be styled appropriately according to his standing as the legally and canonically elected Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina. The rogue diocese's repeated reference to him as "Mark Lawrence" is condescending, demeaning, and intentionally insulting to him and to those under his spiritual authority.

2) References to Bishop Lawrence and the clergy and parishes under his authority as a "breakaway group" are simply inaccurate on their face. In actuality, those clergy and parishes who have followed after the apostate national "church" are the "breakaway goup." They have separated themselves from the established diocese and formed a rogue diocese under a fauxilliary bishop.

3) As I have pointed out before, there is no such entity as "The Episcopal Church in South Carolina." That name is a front for a lawless national organization bent on taking control of a legally constituted local entity. It has no legal standing to take action against a legally recognized ecclesiastical entity or any of that entity's legally recognized leaders. For this and countless other reasons, the lawsuit is without merit and should be dismissed out of hand.

A.S. Haley, far more knowledgeable of canon law than I, has more here.

GAFCON leaders look to the future; media still stuck in the past

The GAFCON meeting in London this week is about charting a course for the future of global Anglicanism. The British media, predictably, remains hung up on a peripheral issue, as this report from The Telegraph illustrates.

A coalition of bishops and leaders from Africa, the Americas and Australasia said it was time for a “radical shift” in how the church is structured away from models of the “British Empire”.

They criticised what they called “revisionist attempts” to abandon basic doctrines on issues such as homosexuality and “turn Christianity merely into a movement for social betterment” during Dr Williams’s tenure.

And they said it was now clear that the leadership in England had failed to hold the 77 million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion together, leaving it in “crisis”.

They spoke out as 200 clergy and laity from 30 countries gathered in London to discuss what they called the “present crisis moment” in the church.

The meeting of leaders of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans comes amid growing warnings of a split over issues such as homosexuality.

It is the first such meeting since 2008 when more than 200 bishops boycotted the official Lambeth Conference in protest at the presence of bishops from the US Episcopal Church, which had consecrated the first openly gay Anglican bishop.

This week’s meeting takes place as the search for a successor to Dr Williams gets under way. It emerged yesterday that the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu – who is popular with traditional evangelicals – had entered the race by standing aside from the body which will make the appointment.

They also announced plans for larger international gathering next year, in what is likely to be seen as an alternative to the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference, hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In a joint communiqué they said next year's gathering should be “a dynamic force for restating the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of revisionist attempts to change basic doctrines and turn Christianity merely into a movement for social betterment”.

They also outlined plans for an overhaul of church structures, replacing the Archbishop of Canterbury as chairman of the worldwide Anglican primates with an elected chair.

Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, leader of Kenya’s 13 million Anglicans, said there needed to be a “radical shift” in how the church is run.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, the leader of 23 million Anglicans in Nigeria, said that while the historic position of the Archbishop of Canterbury would always be respected he should be seen as “one of” many primates.

Likening the overhaul to the way in which the Commonwealth now elects its leadership, he said: “It is the same thing, the church of independent countries – no longer the British Empire – must make some changes.”

He went on: “It is not something that should remain permanent that the Archbishop of Canterbury – whether he understands the dynamics in Africa or not – remains the chair and whatever he says, whether it works or not, is an order.

“No I think if we are to move forward we have to reconsider that position.”

He added: “At the moment it seems that the Church in England isn’t carrying along everybody in the Communion and that is why of course you can see that there is a crisis, so if we must solve the problem we must change our system.”

Announcing plans for a major international gathering next year, The Most Revd Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, said: “That itself to my mind reflects something of the new communion, or the new state of the communion.

“It always strikes me that the Lambeth Conference is premised on the 19th Century sailing ships bringing together, once every 10 years, just bishops.”

Speaking at the weekend Archbishop Jensen said it would be wrong to consider the Archbishop of Canterbury as “leader” of the Anglican church, something he said represented an “Anglocentric view of the world”.

No one will dispute that the aggressive attempts within the Anglican Communion to normalize same sex relationships was the pivotal issue which forced the traditionalist provinces, particularly in the Global South, to reassert the essentials of the faith. It is misleading, however, to portray the whole GAFCON movement as being rooted in a disdain for liberalized sexual ethics. As the failure of the Anglican Covenant makes painfully clear, attempts to paper over the irreconcilable differences between traditionalist and revisionist provinces will, like the tenure of Rowan Williams, soon be a thing of the past. The future belongs to those provinces which share the vision of GAFCON for a Gospel initiative that is truly global in its focus and reach.

GAFCON meeting underway in London; biased reporting in full swing

GAFCON leaders are meeting in London. Here is the announcement via Sydney Anglicans.

The first leadership conference since GAFCON in 2008 is underway in London.

200 clergy and lay leaders, men and women from more than 25 countries, are gathered in London this week.

Archbishop Wabukala

The meeting was the initiative of GAFCON primates through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), which was established after the Jerusalem meeting in 2008.

It follows the latest meeting of the GAFCON/FCA primates council, chaired by the Most Rev’d Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya.

A media statement is due on Monday (UK time).

Archbishop Jensen

Archbishop Peter Jensen is the General Secretary of the FCA, and several Sydney delegates attended the conference, including Dr Mark Thompson, Peter Rogers and Malcolm RIchards from CMS, Dr Claire Smith and lawyer Gillian Davidson as well as the Rector of Cherrybrook, Gav Poole who played a leading organisational role.

Delegates came from other parts of Australia, South Pacific, Asia, Africa, the Middle east and from across the UK.

It is being held at St Mark’s, Battersea Rise and will hear from by speakers including Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the Rev. Dr. Ashley Null, and Bishop John Akao.

Against the backdrop of the increasingly liberal path chosen by the US Episcopal Church, the consecration of openly homosexual bishops and clergy and denial of basic biblical doctrines in some Northern hemisphere provinces, Abp Wabukala expressed the hope that God would bless the conference by “turning this present crisis moment into a visionary future.”

As is always the case when orthodox Anglicans meet, beware of biased reporting, especially from news sources across the pond. Here is how the BBC is reporting the meeting (emphasis original).

Leaders of a worldwide dissident Anglican movement are meeting in London to discuss how to sustain traditional Christian beliefs.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) grew out of concern over developments in some national Churches.

Many Anglicans, particularly in Africa, object to the ordination of gay bishops in the US.

Some 200 delegates from 29 countries are expected to attend the leadership conference at a south London church.

'Biblical teaching' 

The FCA was founded following the Gafcon (Global Anglican Future) conference in Jerusalem in 2008.

The fellowship was an attempt by more traditional Christians to re-assert what its leaders regard as authentic biblical teaching.

The conference is being held at St Mark's church in Battersea Rise.

One of the participants, Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen, has described the FCA as "the only game in town".

"It is a point of rallying Anglicans from around the world. Of exciting them again about the gospel of Jesus.

"It is the mainstream. It represents, the people involved in it, represents the vast majority of Anglicans," Archbishop Jensen told BBC correspondent John McManus.

St Mark's Church

Archbishop Jensen said he appreciated that the current head of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has had a difficult job in trying to keep the organisation united in the face of widely-differing world views.

Included in the report is a photograph of the meeting place, with the caption, "Dissident Anglicans are meeting at St Mark's Church."

Dissident Anglicans? Um, no. Dissidents, historically, are people who disagree with established teaching. GAFCON and FCA exist specifically for the preservation and propagation of the established teaching of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican tradition is no stranger to dissidents, of course, but the term, like Anglican tradition, is not subject to redefinition according to the whims of certain trendy British and American clerics. It would be more accurate, in fact, to refer to the trendy ones as the dissidents, but we learned long ago not to expect that kind of accuracy from the media.

Womenpriests: The wave of the future (NOT!)

Despite her public proclamation never to cover a story on the subject of "womenpriests" again, Mollie Hemingway at GetReligion found this gem from the Indianapolis Star too good to pass up.

As she knelt at the altar of the Far-Southside church during her ordination ceremony, Maria Thornton McClain was unaware that three off-duty police officers stood watch just outside the sanctuary.

"We're just here in case there's a protest or problem," said one of the armed officers, dressed in full uniform. He didn't wish to be identified.

The anonymity was part of the mystery in a growing effort to welcome women into the priesthood.

The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the ordination of women, but more and more women are answering the call as part of a reform movement.

On Sunday, McClain, 71, a former East Coast resident, aunt to several nieces and nephews, and wife of 31 years to Ed McClain, became Indiana's first woman to be ordained into the priesthood.

Baptized a Roman Catholic, McClain, a former nun, moved to Indianapolis in 1977 to become director of religious education at St. Pius X parish. She was ordained as a deacon last year and began preparing for the priesthood.

I'll leave it to Mollie to critique the article's journalistic merit (or lack thereof). What I would like to focus on is a consistent thread which runs through all of the stories of these so-called "womenpriests." In September 2010, TIME reported on the "ordination" of Alta Jacko.

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master’s degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says that being a priest is what she was called to do.

A month later, the same publication reported on the "ordination" of Judy Lee.

Lee, 67, considers herself a validly ordained Catholic priest. The Vatican disagrees. "The Catholic Church ... has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women" because Jesus had no female Apostles, Lee was told in a letter from the local bishop, the Rev. Frank Dewane — who also informed her that she had been excommunicated for ignoring that doctrine. Lee's reply: "Rome can impose all the rules it wants on women, divorced people, gay people. But it can't stop us."

Bring these two articles together with the Star article cited above and the pattern becomes glaringly obvious.

On Sunday, McClain, 71, a former East Coast resident, aunt to several nieces and nephews, and wife of 31 years to Ed McClain, became Indiana's first woman to be ordained into the priesthood.

Jacko, Lee, and McClain are 81, 67, and 71 years of age, respectively. One other article, from the San Diego Union Tribune in August 2010, reported on the "ordination" of Nancy Corran, a mere child of 37, but that was by an "independent" congregation with no apparent historical connection with Rome. Suffice it to say that what the media often reports as a "growing movement" within the Roman Catholic Church to ordain women as priests apparently has little appeal to younger generations of parishioners. I doubt Benedict, who just turned 85, spends much time worrying about it.

Bad journalism, bad religion: a bad combination

Here's a story that appeared in the U.K. Telegraph over the weekend that should raise a few eyebrows.

Alzheimer's sufferer Dorothy Griffiths, 87, was found sitting down after staff heard a bang and a carer went to the office for help to lift her.

But agency nurse Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge, said they would have to wait.

Carer Zoe Shaw told the Sheffield hearing: "It took between five and ten minutes because he was praying upstairs in the office on his prayer mat. A staff member told me we had to wait for him to finish."

An ambulance was not called for nearly four hours after Mrs Griffiths fell from bed and cut her head and suffered a gash to her hip at the privately-run Valley Park Nursing Home in Wombwell, near Barnsley.

She died later in hospital. Mr Bhutto failed to appear at the inquest and a summons had to be issued for him to attend the resumed hearing later in the year.

Assistant deputy coroner Donald Coutts-Wood said he had contacted him during a recess and he denied being the duty nurse that night and said he had been there on a course.

Mrs Griffiths, the widow of former Barnsley footballer Steve Griffiths, who used to live in Wombwell, had been a resident at the home since 2009 and died last November.

She was put to bed at 9.45pm on October 24 and checked checked every two hours, according to Zoe Shaw.

The old lady was using the toilet at 4am and Mrs Shaw went to an office to fill in paperwork.

She said Mrs Griffiths was not prone to falls and was not considered "at risk".

She and another carer found her on the floor and Mrs Shaw went to get help from Mr Bhutto. He was the most senior nurse on night duty at the home, run by the Mimosa Healthcare Group, because the senior carer was unable to work havning been on duty for six of the previous seven nights.

When Mr Bhutto arrived he checked the pensioner's limbs, took her blood presssure and pulse while she was still on the floor and told the carers to put her back into bed.

But instead Mrs Shaw, worried that she might fall again, washed the old lady, dressed her and took her to the office while she carried on filling forms.

At about 5.45am she took her to the lounge and said she was "talking fine" and walking around.

But at breakfast-time when the residents were being offered a cup of tea Mrs Griffiths was found unresponsive and an ambulance was called at about 7.30am.

Mrs Shaw, who broke down and wept in the witness box, said she would have called an ambulance immediately after the fall but had only since discovered that staff could override a nurses' decision.

Speaking after the inquest was adjourned Dorothy's daughter Jean David, 61, said: "We are quite upset that Mr Bhutto hadn't appeared and we are having to come here again particularly as my brother is having to come up from Staffordshire. We would like it to have been done and dusted but we can't leave it without his evidence."

As an aside, it should be noted that this article is not very well-written. American journalism, as anyone brave enough to endure the agony of browsing a daily newspaper knows, is in a truly sorry state these days. If this article, however, is an illustration of what the British reading public experiences every day, our cousins across the pond are in far worse shape.

I will concede that I have not been employed in print media since the mid-1980's, but do news publications no longer hire copy editors? How could a sentence like, "She was put to bed at 9.45pm on October 24 and checked checked every two hours, according to Zoe Shaw," even get past a low level proof-reader?

After the disturbing account of the Muslim nurse refusing to help the patient until he finished with his prayer time (more about that shortly), the chronology of events becomes muddled and confusing. The patient in question, a woman of some prominence as the widow of a former "footballer" (soccer player), is said to have "died later in hospital," apparently as a result of a series of events which began at "9:45 pm on October 24."

Later in the article, however, the patient is said to have "died last November." The specific date of her death is not mentioned, but it would have been at least a week after the events in question.

Suffice it to say, from a strictly journalistic perspective, this article could use some improvement. The main controversy, however, seems pretty apparent. A Muslim nurse laid aside his responsibilities to a patient in an emergency situation so as not to interrupt his time on the prayer mat. This is disturbing on many levels, not the least of which being that it demonstrates a legalistic devotion to religious ritual as an end in itself, rather than a means to a greater end.

When challenged by the legalistic religious leaders of his day for a supposed transgression of the Sabbath law (cf. Matthew 12:1-8), Jesus quoted from the prophet Hosea, "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6).

The one true God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ would never demand of his followers that they finish their quiet time while a neighbor is crying out for help. Indeed, no prayer rising up before the throne of grace is more pleasing than the one put into practice by extending mercy and compassion to those who are suffering.

Non-Anglican news from across the pond: Soccer wannabe sues Baptists

The London Evening Standard reports on a legal battle brewing between a church and a soccer superstar who might have been.

A retired semi-professional footballer who claims his faith ruined his chances of playing for Manchester United is suing the Baptist Church for £10 million.

In a case reminiscent of the 2001 Billy Connolly film The Man Who Sued God, Arquimedes Nganga accused religious leaders of deceiving him "into following false beliefs".

Mr Nganga, 46, from Forest Hill, said he could have earned £20,000 a week, despite never making more than £200 a month in his home country Portugal's Third Division. He quit the sport aged 25 when he converted to the Baptist faith.

He said: "I could definitely have had a long career in the Premiership. I see many players playing today who I am not inferior to - and perhaps even better than. Most midfielders are either defensive or attacking but I was both. I had something new."

After converting in 1989, Mr Nganga spent 19 years as a "fervent evangelist", devoting his life to the Bible and abstaining from sex. Now he is suing the leaders of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, who, he says, "conspired to defraud me of my finances, time and my life".

In papers filed in the High Court, he accuses the church of destroying his social life, causing him "psychological harm" and defrauding him of money through compulsory donations.

The writ blames church leaders for physical assaults Mr Nganga suffered at the hands of people he was trying to convert. It states: "They got upset and reacted violently after being told that they were sinners. I was slapped and punched, and kicked in my left knee, breaking its cartilage."

The church said today that it would vigorously contest the claim. As well as suing the British arm, Mr Nganga has begun a legal battle with the US-based Baptist World Alliance and has written a book, The Millenary Fraud.

It would have been helpful if the reporter had elaborated on the alleged "false beliefs" which this Nganga fellow alleges deceived him and cost him a career as a soccer star. Alas, no such elaboration. We can only infer from the plaintiff's 19-year career as a "fervent evangelist," his accompanying sexual abstinence, and apparent in-your-face style of personal evangelism that he was a convert to a particularly sectarian strain of "the Baptist faith." The title of his book, The Millenary Fraud, (the title is not italicized in the original article) would imply at least some of the "false beliefs" involved a peculiar form of eschatology.

A cursory examination of pertinent web sites, however, suggests that the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Falls Church, Virginia-based Baptist World Alliance are remarkably ecumenical. The Baptist Union's "Five Core Values," developed in 1996, are quite holistic:

A Prophetic Community
Following Jesus in confronting evil, injustice and hypocrisy. Challenging worldly concepts of power, wealth, status and security.

An Inclusive Community
Following Jesus in transcending barriers of gender, language, race, class, age and culture. Identifying with those who are rejected, deprived and powerless.

A Sacrificial Community
Following Jesus in accepting vulnerability and the necessity of sacrifice. Seeking to reflect the generous, life-giving nature of God.

A Missionary Community
Following Jesus in demonstrating in word and action God's forgiving and healing love. Calling & enabling people to experience the love of God for themselves.

A Worshipping Community
Following Jesus in engaging in worship and prayer which inspire and undergird all we are and do. Exploring and expressing what it means to live together as the people of God, obeying his Word and following Christ in the whole of daily life.

Moreover, the "Theological Papers" section of the Baptist World Alliance web site includes the following eye-catching tidbits:

Theological Conversations 

Current Conversations

The third round in the second series of conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Vatican took place December 14-20, 2008, at Duke Divinity School on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The first round in this series was held at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, in the city of Birmingham in the United States, from December 10-15, 2006. The second round was held in Rome, Italy, December 2-8, 2007.

The Baptist team is being led by Baptist World Alliance (BWA) General Secretary Neville Callam and Paul Fiddes, Principal of Regents Park College of Oxford University who also chairs the BWA Commission on Doctrine and Inter-Church Cooperation.

The conversations are a continuation of previous talks with the Vatican Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1990.

What are Theological Conversations?

One important BWA ministry involves theological conversations with other world Christian bodies. It is important to meet and talk with Christian communities to better understand the similarities and differences and to explore areas where Christians can agree to be in fellowship and to cooperate together. Such meetings have the added value of helping to strengthen the situation of small, minority Baptist communities in certain parts of the world as the theology and history of the Baptist movement is explained.

Past Conversations

Over the last 20 years the BWA has had conversations with the Reformed Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the World Mennonite Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Pontifical Council for promoting Christian unity. Preliminary discussions have been held with the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.

Needless to say, that is a pretty well-rounded interaction with the wider Christian community. This particular expression of "the Baptist Church" does not appear to be overrun with screaming fundamentalist fanatics, although it might be easy to get that impression from the scant details offered in the Standard article.

Media malpractice, baptismal renewal edition

Research into the sacramental practices of various Christian traditions is not a strong suit of secular journalists reporting on persons, places, and things religious. The consequences of such negligence are often laughable when they appear in print. Consider this headline from a story in the New York Daily News about Archbishop Timothy Dolan's pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Dolan gets a holy dip on holy trip 

Rebaptized in River Jordan

Yes, headline writers have been known to mischaracterize the actual content of a story. In this case, however, the opening paragraph only digs a deeper hole for the entire Daily News editorial department.

JERUSALEM — Archbishop Dolan followed in the footsteps of John the Baptist Sunday and was rebaptized in the River Jordan during the last stop on his Holy Land pilgrimage.

As Mollie Hemingway points out, the ignorance exhibited here is beyond any reasonable explanation. Rebaptism is a novel practice introduced by the Anabaptists in the 16th century. No major branch of the Christian Church -- be it Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant -- has ever recognized it as legitimate. Whether you are a Catholic, an Anglican, or a Methodist, baptism is a once in a lifetime, unrepeatable event. A Roman Catholic archbishop, of all people, would certainly know this.

What actually happened at the River Jordan?

“We renewed our baptismal vows at the River Jordan,” Dolan said.

There you have it. ++Dolan and his entourage renewed their baptismal vows. That is a relatively common practice in Christian churches, usually taking place annually during Easter Vigil. It may involve a little sprinkling of water -- flung into the midst of the congregation from palm branches in some of the more liturgical churches -- but nothing remotely approaching a "holy dip," a la full immersion.

Once again, media wolves over-hype an underwhelming Vatican document

Whenever Pope Benedict speaks, the ravening wolves of the secular media rush to misquote him and/or deliberately misinterpret his words. Whenever he does not speak but some nebulous band of Vatican bureaucrats put out a document filled with vague nuances, those same wolves leap to attribute it to the pontiff with the full authority of ex cathedra.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that a relatively benign and unremarkable document on global economics originating from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has been morphed into the apocalyptic headline, "Vatican calls for Central World Bank." The truth, however, is much more boring than the fiction created by the media hype. Elizabeth Scalia reminds us of the subtle differences between pope and pronouncement.

A fundamental lesson in church-related stories: Pope is not “the Vatican” and “the Vatican” is not the pope; the Curia is not the Bishop of Rome and while they are usually in sync, their pronouncements are separate and distinct; it may seem like a small point, but — for the sake of accuracy and understanding — provenance should always be clear; when one sounds a tone-deaf notes the other should not bear the burden, and when one plays a thing sweetly, the other should not get the credit. Today’s paper on financial reform was released not by Benedict but by The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. This is an outreach and communications entity — just like the Pontifical Council for Social Communications or the Pontifical Council for Culture.

The document itself, entitled, "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority," is typically underwhelming and open to thoughtful critique. Samuel Gregg finds it wanting in several areas.

Despite the Catholic Left’s excited hyperventilating that the document released today by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) would put the Church “to the left of Nancy Pelosi” on economic issues, more careful reading of “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority” soon indicates that it reflects rather conventional contemporary economic thinking. Unfortunately, given the uselessness of much present-day economics, that’s not likely to make it especially helpful in thinking through some of our present financial challenges.

Doctrinally speaking, there’s nothing new to be found in this text. As PCJP officials will themselves tell you, it’s not within this curial body’s competence to make doctrinal statements that bind Catholic consciences. Moreover, the notion that an increasingly integrated world economy requires some type of authority able to make decisions about what the Church calls “the universal common good” has long been a staple of Catholic social teaching. Such references to a global world authority have always been accompanied by an emphasis on the idea of subsidiarity, and the present document is no exception to that rule. This principle maintains that any higher level of government should assist lower forms of political authority and civil-society associations “only when” (as this PCJP text states) “individual, social or financial actors are intrinsically deficient in capacity, or cannot manage by themselves to do what is required of them.”

But putting aside doctrinal questions, this text also makes claims of a more strictly economic nature. Given that these generally fall squarely into the area of prudential judgment for Catholics, it’s quite legitimate for Catholics to discuss and debate some of this document’s claims. So here are just a few questions worth asking.

First, the text makes a legitimate point about the effects of a disjunction between the financial sector and the rest of the economy. It fails, however, to note that one major reason for this disjunction has been the dissolution of any tie between money and an external object of value that regulates the quantity of money and credit in circulation in the “real” economy.

Between the late 1870s and 1914, such a linkage existed in the form of the classic gold standard. This gave the world remarkable monetary stability and low inflation without any centralized authority. You needn’t be a Ron Paul disciple to recognize that fiat money’s rise is at least partly responsible for the monetary crises this document correctly laments.

Second, this document displays no recognition of the role played by moral hazard in generating the 2008 crisis or the need to prevent similar situations from arising in the future. Moral hazard describes those situations when people are effectively insulated from the possible negative consequences of their choices. This makes them more likely to take risks they wouldn’t otherwise take — especially with other people’s money. The higher the extent of the guarantee, the greater is the risk of moral hazard. It creates, as the financial journalist Martin Wolf writes, “an overwhelming incentive to privatize gains and socialize losses.”

If PCJP were cognizant of this fact, it might have hesitated before recommending we consider “forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds, making the support conditional on ‘virtuous’ behaviours aimed at developing the ‘real economy.’” Such a recapitalization would simply reinforce the message that Wall Street can always turn to taxpayers to bail them out when their latest impossible-to-understand financial scheme goes south. In terms of orthodox Catholic theology, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the one who creates an occasion of sin bears some indirect responsibility for the choices of the person tempted by this situation to do something very imprudent or simply wrong.

Third, given this text’s subject matter, it reflects one very strange omission. Nowhere does it contain a detailed discussion of the high levels of public debt and deficits in many developed economies, the clear-and-present danger they represent to the global financial system, and their negative impact upon the prospects for economic growth (i.e., what gets people out of poverty).

Given these facts, how could governments provide the aforementioned public funds when they are already so heavily in debt and already tottering under the weight of existing fiscal obligations? By raising taxes? Even Bill Clinton thinks that’s not a great idea in an economic slowdown. Indeed, the basic demands of commutative justice indicate that governments need to meet their current obligations to existing creditors before they can even consider contributing to further bailouts.

Fourth, the document calls for the creation of some type of world central bank. Yet its authors seem unaware that much of the blame for our present economic mess is squarely attributable to central banks. Here one need only note that the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies from 2000 onwards played an indispensible role in creating America’s housing-market bubble, the development of questionable securities products, and the subsequent 2008 meltdown.

Calls for a global central bank aren’t new. Keynes argued for such an organization 75 years ago. But why, given national central banks’ evident failures, should anyone suppose that a global central bank wouldn’t fall prey to the same errors? The folly of a centralized supranational body like the European Central Bank setting a one-size-fits-all interest-rate for economies as different as Greece and Germany should now be evident to everyone who doesn’t live in the fantasy world inhabited by EU bureaucrats. Indeed, it is simply impossible for any one individual or organization to know what is the optimal interest-rate for every country in the EU, let alone the world.

Plenty of other critiques could — and no doubt will — be made of some of the economic claims advanced in this PCJP document. As if in anticipation of this criticism, the document states, “We should not be afraid to propose new ideas.” That is most certainly true. Unfortunately, many of its authors’ ideas reflect an uncritical assimilation of the views of many of the very same individuals and institutions that helped generate the world’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek, we can surely do better.

The media have no such "long tradition of thinking seriously about finance" or any other subject, but they, too, can surely do better.

Then again, maybe they can't.

C. Peter Wagner: Pat Robertson on steroids

H/T to my friend Ben Sharpe for linking to this interview with C. Peter Wagner. This fellow is everything the liberal media want you to think all Christians are: fanatical, weird, and bent on establishing some kind of theocratic society.

A new charismatic Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and Jesus' return is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role. Several apostles affiliated with the movement helped organize or spoke at Rick Perry's August prayer rally, The Response.

The international "apostolic and prophetic" movement has been dubbed the New Apostolic Reformation by C. Peter Wagner, who has become one of its leaders. He describes himself as the first person who noticed the movement, gave a name to it and started writing books about it. He was, until recently retiring, the president of Global Harvest Ministries. For 30 years, he was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Missions.

Secular media, please note, there is nothing "new" about the "movement" Wagner supposedly leads. Such groups have been around since the days of Simon the Magician (Acts 8:9-24). They have no more influence now than they did then, no matter how many politicians seek their blessing. Wagner's goofy theology, however, provides the media with plenty of ammunition to perpetuate false Christian stereotypes. Personally, Wagner lost me when he identified "himself as the first person who noticed the movement, gave a name to it and started writing books about it." Apparently, he didn't get the memo about humility being an essential characteristic of Christian leadership.

The interview itself is more than a little amusing. Wagner is Pat Robertson on steroids.

On the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan being connected to the emperor of Japan having sex with the sun goddess

"That happened many, many years ago, and that created a spiritual atmosphere over Japan which was an atmosphere ruled by the powers of darkness. The sun goddess is not a very nice lady. The sun goddess is a power of darkness, which is headed up by the kingdom of Satan. And so the sun goddess wants natural disasters to come to Japan. Sometimes the hand of God, which is more powerful, will prevent them. And when he decides to prevent them and when he doesn't is far beyond anything that we can predict."

"But in this case, God could have prevented that tsunami and the destruction, but he didn't. He just took his hand off and allowed these natural forces to work. And one of the background pieces of information is Japan is under control of the sun goddess."

Uh, yeah. That sun goddess is really a nasty old wench. I guess Japan's woes are similar to those of Haiti.

Back in the 1980's and 1990's, Wagner was at the forefront of the "church growth" movement which didn't really accomplish much. Is he now, or has he ever been, representative of a significant movement within Christianity? I don't think so.

"Fired" for denying Hell: Is there more to this story than just a Facebook post?

Secular journalists who report on church-related controversies often exhibit a gross lack of knowledge about particular ecclesiastical policies and practices. This story from AP writer Tom Breen raised several questions in my mind.

DURHAM, N.C. — When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.
The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

The caption underneath the photograph of Pastor Holtz reads as follows:

Chad Holtz was fired from his position as pastor of a church in Henderson, N.C., after posting on his Facebook page a defense of a forthcoming book by megachurch pastor Rob Bell, in which Bell challenges millions of Christians’ understanding of the afterlife.

As a former United Methodist pastor, I am familiar with the itinerant system in that denomination. Under that system, pastors are not "fired" or "dismissed." They are merely reassigned by the bishop to another church. In most cases, this is a routine procedure. Every pastor is subject to reassignment on an annual basis and, if the UMC is still following the same calendar it followed during my tenure, this is about the time of year when decisions of that nature are being made. So, I have to wonder whether or not Mr. Breen has all the facts straight.

There are rare occasions when a congregation puts up such a fuss that a pastor is removed before the annual reassignments are made. But such a pastor would have to have been caught in the back pew of the sanctuary with the church secretary, three pygmies, and a chimpanzee before the bishop would make such a drastic move. A provocative post on Facebook hardly rises to that level. But, apparently, this was not Pastor Holtz's first offense.

Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.

So, the whole template of the story -- that Holtz was "fired" for posting a note supporting Rob Bell -- is undermined. It's not just his views on hell, but his views on just about every other controversial subject which have aroused the ire of his parishioners. But what about his plans to relocate to Tennessee, get a job, and plant a church? Under the normal procedure, Holtz would simply be sent to another church or, if worst came to worst, be given a desk job at the conference office. The fact that he is moving out of state and starting a new church is all the more evidence that this story is about a lot more than a Facebook post.

But, then again, maybe I've been out of the Methodist loop too long and things really have changed that dramatically.

UPDATE: A comment on Brad A. Greenberg's post at GetReligion offers some clarification on Holtz's situation:

Rogers and Sanctus are only partially correct. Holtz was not “guaranteed” an appointment because he is an MDiv student and classified as a student local pastor. The only people “guaranteed” an appointment in the UMC are ordained elders. It sounds like he’ll go back to his home conference after graduation which is far different than getting shipped off to another conference.

(I’m not in that conference but am an elder in the UMC)

Ah, yes! The student local pastor. I remember those days well.

Benedict, human suffering, and insufferable journalists

Invariably, the most insufferable member of any congregation is the one who is never in need of homiletical instruction or correction himself, but who is constantly reminding his fellow parishioners to heed "what the preacher said last Sunday." Such a person is very likely to shout "Amen!" when the man in the pulpit utters a stinging rebuke of persons lacking humility, always assuming the intended target is the well-dressed lady three rows down on the other side of the aisle. With regard to the pronouncements of Pope Benedict XVI, David Gibson (no relation) would appear to be just such a person. He is, of course, not alone. Journalists reporting on the public statements of religious leaders regularly show themselves to be insufferable, cherry picking those portions of such statements which support their agenda and slinging them in the face of detractors.

Addressing the 25th international conference of the Pontifical Council for Healthcare Ministry, Benedict stated that universal access to healthcare is a fundamental human right. There was nothing earthshaking or controversial about such a statement coming from the pontiff. He was merely restating traditional Catholic social teaching. Moreover, he was speaking to an international conference which has met regularly for the last quarter century. In other words, healthcare is not simply an issue the pope and his cohorts suddenly decided to address in light of recent events. From its very inception, the church has been at the forefront of alleviating human suffering and providing healthcare to all, often doing so in the face of stiff cultural and political opposition. But the big picture, as we have come, sadly, to expect, is of no relevance to contemporary journalists whose only concern is how a statement from the leader of a worldwide institution, intended to foster unity and cooperation for the promotion of the common good, can be twisted to ratchet up division and acrimony in one country where healthcare is a current topic of debate. Two paragraph's from (David) Gibson's column are illustrative of this point.

Phrases like "distributive justice" and "guaranteed universal access to health care" are anathema to Republicans (and might send Glenn Beck into apoplexy), but they are especially problematic for many conservative Catholic Republicans such as incoming House Speaker John Boehner. These Republicans are often cast as more loyal to the pope than Catholic Democrats, even though they oppose universal health care and other church priorities, such as immigration reform.

Many Republicans did cite claims (widely disputed) that health care reform would fund abortion as one reason for their opposition. In his message Thursday, the pope specifically objected to any health care policies that would include abortion coverage, in-vitro fertilization (which can entail the destruction of embryos) or "legalized euthanasia." But Republicans, and most Catholics among them, opposed health care reform because of its expansion of government regulation, a position that put them at odds with the Catholic bishops of the United States, with Catholic teaching, and with the pope.

Let us consider the first cited paragraph in light of the full context of Benedict's remarks.

Important also in the field of health, integral part of each one's existence and of the common good, is to establish a true distributive justice that guarantees to all, on the basis of objective needs, adequate care. Consequently, the world of health cannot be subtracted from the moral rules that should govern it so that it will not become inhuman. As I stressed in the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate," the social doctrine of the Church has always evidenced the importance of distributive justice and of social justice in the different sectors of human relations (No. 35). Justice is promoted when one receives the life of the other and one assumes responsibility for him, responding to his expectations, because in him one grasps the face itself of the Son of God, who for us was made man. The divine image impressed in our brother is the foundation of the lofty dignity of every person and arouses in each one the need of respect, of care and of service. The bond between justice and charity, in the Christian perspective, is very close: "Charity exceeds justice, because to love is to give, to offer of my 'own' to the other; but it is never without justice, which induces to give the other what is 'his,' that which is due to him by reason of his being and his acting. [...] He who loves others with charity is first of all just to them. Not only is justice not foreign to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel way to charity: Justice is 'inseparable from charity,' intrinsic to it. Justice is the first way of charity" (Ibid., 6). In this connection, with a synthetic and incisive expression, St. Augustine taught that "justice consists in helping the poor" ("De Trinitate," XIV, 9: PL 42, 1045).

There is a fine line between "distributive justice" advocated by Benedict and "redistributive justice," which is a basic tenet of socialist states. The former is brought about through individuals acting freely out of charity with a sense of justice; the latter is brought about by government coercion through unjust means. There is not so fine a line between "guranteed universal access to healthcare" and "universal healthcare coverage." The two are not one and the same, by a long shot. Contrary to (David) Gibson's claim in the second cited paragraph, opposition to "health care reform because of its expansion of government regulation" does not put one "at odds with the Catholic bishops of the United States, with Catholic teaching, and with the pope." At the height of the healthcare debate last year, a joint statement by Archbishop Joseph Naumann and Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City stated clearly and succinctly the difference between the rights and responsibilities of individuals and the government's obligations with regard to healthcare.

The right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it. Yet in our American culture, Catholic teaching about the “right” to healthcare is sometimes confused with the structures of “entitlement.” The teaching of the Universal Church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services. Rather, the Church has asserted the rights of every individual to have access to those things most necessary for sustaining and caring for human life, while at the same time insisting on the personal responsibility of each individual to care properly for his or her own health.

Had he done the slightest bit of research, (David) Gibson would undoubtedly have found this statement on any number of websites and blogs. Whether it would have changed the relative nature of his column is doutful, however. Insufferable journalists are always more eager to create facts than to report them.

UPDATE: On another issue related to health and morality, the press is ginning up more needless controversy. The Anchoress has a roundup of coverage of the pope's remarks about condoms in his new book.

You can't make this stuff up: Olbermann replacement dumped for same reason

Open-minded, tolerant liberalism at its very best!

Chris Hayes, tapped Friday by MSNBC to fill in for the indefinitely suspended Keith Olbermann as host of the prime-time political show “Countdown,” gave money to two Democratic campaigns in recent years. Now, following that disclosure, MSNBC says Mr. Hayes won’t get the gig after all.

Mr. Hayes, editor of The Nation, a liberal magazine, made a series of donations to Josh Segall, an Alabama Democrat, who ran for Congress in 2008 and considered running in the Democratic primary for this election. Mr. Hayes donated $1,500 to Mr. Segall in 2008 and $250 in December 2009, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The editor also donated $250 in January 2009 to Thomas Geoghegan, who ran in a primary for an Illinois seat. This summer, Mr. Hayes interviewed Mr. Geoghegan, an author, when he guest hosted The Rachel Maddow Show, another MSNBC program.

Earlier Friday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin suspended Mr. Olbermann, one of the network’s highest-profile anchors, indefinitely without pay for donating to three Democrats running in Tuesday’s election. In one case, Mr. Olbermann donated to one candidate the same day he hosted her on his show, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”

Several hours later, MSNBC said Mr. Hayes was no longer slated to take Mr. Olbermann’s place. The network said it would name a new replacement soon.

A disciple is a student, not a teacher

Yesterday, I explored the paper trail of TIME "reporter" Tim Padgett and his questionable objectivity in covering matters pertaining to the Catholic Church. A degree in theology is not a requirement for a religion reporter, of course, but a rudimentary knowledge the Bible should be a minimal expectation. In the closing paragraph of his obnoxious screed against the Vatican, Padgett demonstrates that his understanding of biblical texts is more informed by his revisionist agenda than by even the most casual amount of actual study.

My daughter happened to be serving as an altar girl at Mass on Sunday. She was smart enough to sense that in the gospel reading, Jesus was relating to Mary as if she were a disciple. And she'll learn that the New Testament is full of other passages that indicate Jesus believed women could be alteri Christi, or "other Christs," as priests often call themselves. Real Catholicism encourages that kind of enlightened thinking — and it certainly doesn't call it, as the Catholic Church does, a crime.

The overall picture which Padgett is trying to paint is one in which Mary becomes a biblical proof-text for the ordination of women. But the road from discipleship to ordination is a far more arduous one than Padgett might have us believe. Padgett, as we have seen, is a sloppy journalist. But he is an even sloppier exegete. In his zeal to justify his revisionist agenda, he has conflated the roles of discipleship and ordination. Ironically, the passage he cites with such fanfare (Luke 10.38-42) actually mitigates against his argument. Consider:

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Here is Jesus, indeed, "relating to Mary as if she were a disciple." No one has ever disputed this or that women were included among Jesus' disciples. Padgett's insinuation that church hierarchs would deny this is a red herring. But a disciple is a student, not a teacher! Jesus commends Mary for her humility, quietly sitting at his feet and listening to his teaching. When Martha disrupts the meeting, Jesus (gently) rebukes her. The woman who remains quiet in order to learn is commended; the woman who speaks and attempts to exercise authority is rebuked. Does this not sound very much like Paul's instructions in 1 Timothy 2.11-12?

Let a woman learn quietly and with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet.

It would be incorrect to argue that this specific instruction by Paul to a specific congregation is sufficient, in and of itself, to support a blanket prohibition against women's ordination (I will delve into this further in an upcoming post on the differing understandings of women's ordination within the various Christian traditions). But, considered alongside Jesus' words of commendation to Mary, it can be seen in a far more positive light than many revisionists would see it. Throughout the New Testament, it is women, often moreso than men, who are held out as the model of humble, obedient discipleship which all followers of Christ--women and men, alike--ought to emulate. Women do not need the burden of ordination in order to be alteri Christi. They hold a place of honor in the church which revisionists like Padgett, blinded by their upside down worldview, fail to recognize.

Tim Padgett's (anti-Catholic) paper trail

The good folks at GetReligion do an excellent job of critiquing the media's coverage of religious news. One of the more entertaining topics which has lately fallen under their scrutiny is the obsession of several media outlets (most notably TIME magazine) with the alleged "ordination" of women "priests" in the "Roman Catholic Church." I have also taken a few jabs at journalists Dawn Reiss and Tim Padgett for their shoddy and shamelessly biased reporting. Greg Kandra, a Roman Catholic deacon, also took Reiss and her editors to task.

Thanks to Reiss's weak and self-serving response to Kandra's critique, we know a little bit about her background, but still very little about her motivation behind writing such a pathetic piece. Padgett, however, is a different story. One need only click the second link on the related "Stories" sidebar to his article to find a previous article entitled, "The Vatican and Women: Casting the First Stone." This story, unlike Padgett's more recent piece, is labeled "Viewpoint," and the author makes it very clear that he has a decidedly negative one about the Vatican.

What a rich coincidence we Roman Catholics got to experience at Mass on Sunday, July 18. The scheduled Gospel passage was Luke's story about Jesus visiting the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany (who Catholic tradition says was Mary Magdalene). Many biblical scholars believe the narrative shows Jesus encouraging Mary to assume the role of a disciple, like Peter and the guys. That notion lent some cable-news significance to the reading — coming as it did just days after the Vatican issued an avowal, as obtuse as it was malicious, that ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia.

Rome's misogynous declaration, tossed into its new guidelines on reporting clerical sexual abuse, did more than just highlight the church's hoary horror at the idea of female priests — or its penchant of late for sticking its papal slippers in its mouth every chance it gets. It also pointed up an increasingly spiteful rhetoric of bigotry. When Argentina in mid-July legalized gay marriage, the country's Catholic bishops weren't content to simply denounce the legislation; they used the occasion to argue for the subhumanity of homosexual men and lesbians, the way many white Southern preachers weren't ashamed to degrade African Americans during the civil rights movement. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio not only called the new law "a scheme to destroy God's plan"; he termed it "a real and dire anthropological throwback," as if homosexuality were evolutionarily inferior to heterosexuality.

What should be obvious to anyone who has ever been acquainted with self-identified "Roman Catholics" like Padgett is that something is bugging him and it has nothing to do with the Vatican's views on women. That is a veneer behind which he would like to hide, but his tone blows his cover. It is something more serious than a simple difference of opinion that is motivating Padgett to characterize the Vatican's declaration as "obtuse," "malicious," and "misogynous." His choice of words is intended, rather obviously, to convey the impression that Rome is behaving irrationally, but it is Padgett who is being irrational here. Whatever one's own opinion, the teaching of the Catholic Church (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church and most confessional Protestant churches) on the ordination of women is rooted in 2,000 years of biblical and Apostolic tradition and has far more to do with an historical understanding of the priesthood than with an adverse opinion of women. It cannot be dismissed by a handful of twenty-first century revisionists simply because it is offensive to their post-modern notions of "equality" and "inclusiveness."

Padgett's cheap shot at Cardinal Bergoglio is also irrational and reflective of a profound lack of understanding of Christian teaching on human sexuality. It was the ancient pagans, regularly indulging in promiscuous and perverse sexual behavior, that Paul and other New Testament writers warned were imperiling their souls and in danger of losing out on their inheritance, namely, the kingdom of God. "And such were some of you," Paul writes to the Corinthians. "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6.11-12). As difficult as it may be for post-modern "progressive" ears to hear, the move toward normalizing homosexual relationships is not a step forward, but a dramatic, and dangerous, step backward. Such relationships, reflective as they are of the brokenness of the present age, will not be a part of the age to come. They are a part of the past to which those who are looking toward God's glorious future cannot continue to cling.

But, as we read further into Padgett's screed, we find he has little interest in thoughtful consideration of historic Christian teaching on women, homosexuality, or any other subject. Instead, he is distressed that Benedict and company appear unwilling to bow at the altar of that most infallible of all authorities, the public opinion polls.

How did it come to this? The answer lies in why the Vatican felt compelled to throw its antifemale jab into the sexual-abuse directives. When any institution is as convinced of its own moral infallibility as the Catholic Church is, it tends to lash out at criticism — especially charges as serious as the priestly rape of children — with Dostoyevskian paranoia. And the church then fortifies its less popular stances, like an all-male priesthood or the condemnation of gays, in the process becoming even more uncompromising. Most Catholics, according to polls in the U.S. and abroad, support women's ordination, but the church peevishly views that trend as an insidious subagenda of its sexual-abuse accusers. Hence last week's astonishing aside from Rome that both the ordination of female priests and pedophilia are graviora delicta, or grave crimes 

* * * * 

And it's sounding that way to Catholics as much as it is to non-Catholics. Many if not most of us Catholics remain Catholics today not because of the church's leadership but in spite of it. In a new Gallup poll, 62% of U.S. Catholics say gay relationships are morally acceptable. Which means we're not thrilled to have our religion represented by a bunch of homophobes wearing miters. Even those of us who sharply disagree with the church on a number of doctrinal issues still want to believe it can be a helpful, contemplative guide in matters spiritual and social. But if it keeps up the hateful discourse, it will lose whatever modicum of attention my generation of Catholics still pays it — and it can forget about my children's generation.

For someone who claims himself to be a Catholic, Padgett seems a little too willing to embrace so many popular caricatures of the institution to which he claims membership. Jack Chick couldn't have said it better. But, all caricature aside, there is something uniquely American, in the worst sense of the word, about Padgett's reference to opinion polls. To begin with, such polls are probably much like pre-election polls where numbers fluctuate considerably when the sampling is broken down between "adults," "registered voters," and "likely voters." The different categories into which "most Catholics" would fall are innumerable. Lapsed and disgruntled Catholics are a dime a dozen and, in all likelihood, vastly over-represented in polling samples.

Polling variances aside, however, only an American Catholic, who is far more American than Catholic, would assume that since "Most Catholics, according to polls in the U.S. and abroad, support women's ordination," the Vatican would simply yield to public opinion. It is not the duty of the pope or any of his subordinates to make or amend church policies based on the fickle opinions of "most Catholics." Their duty, under God, is to guard and defend the faith once delivered, and if the One who delivered that faith to them has not given them the authority to ordain women or bless homosexual relationships, they are not going to derive it from some innocuous public opinion poll or defy the Almighty for the sake of popular approval. Contra Padgett, the Church's moral authority cannot be "salvaged" by its abandonment of the eternal for the sake of the temporal. Rather, that authority is strengthened by its willingness to stand firm for what is right in the face of popular discontent.

Padgett's closing paragraph again underscores his lack of understanding of some pretty basic biblical teachings.

My daughter happened to be serving as an altar girl at Mass on Sunday. She was smart enough to sense that in the gospel reading, Jesus was relating to Mary as if she were a disciple. And she'll learn that the New Testament is full of other passages that indicate Jesus believed women could be alteri Christi, or "other Christs," as priests often call themselves. Real Catholicism encourages that kind of enlightened thinking — and it certainly doesn't call it, as the Catholic Church does, a crime.

This deserves fuller examination in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that Tim Padgett's paper trail leading up to his more recent article on the "ordination" of a female "priest" indicates that he has a decidedly anti-Catholic agenda (although he calls himself a Catholic) which calls into question his objectivity as a reporter.

TIME publishes another work of fiction on women "priests"

It is becoming apparent that TIME magazine has some kind of vested interest in women in vestments. Last week, a factually challenged piece by Dawn Reiss chronicled the incredible saga of Alta Jacko, an 81-year-old mother of eight who was also a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. This week, Tim Padgett offers another work of fiction about the Vatican's alleged reaction to the alleged movement to ordain women as "priests."

Like any good priest, Judy Lee knows how to use a Bible story. One of the readings for Roman Catholic Masses on a recent Sunday, from the Book of Wisdom, recounts how the Hebrews defied the pharaoh by worshipping God "in secret." That passage resonates at the house in Fort Myers, Fla., where Lee is conducting Mass for 25 Catholics gathered in front of a coffee-table altar in defiance of the Pope. "Rome says you'll be thrown out of the church for being here," says Lee, "because I'm a woman."

Lee, 67, considers herself a validly ordained Catholic priest. The Vatican disagrees. "The Catholic Church ... has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women" because Jesus had no female Apostles, Lee was told in a letter from the local bishop, the Rev. Frank Dewane — who also informed her that she had been excommunicated for ignoring that doctrine. Lee's reply: "Rome can impose all the rules it wants on women, divorced people, gay people. But it can't stop us."

She and the more than 100 other women who claim to be Catholic priests in the U.S. and abroad can thank the church for one thing: its hysterical response to their movement — in July the Vatican branded female ordination a delictum gravius, or grave crime, the same label it has given pedophilia — has elicited enough attention to lift their profile out of the catacombs. As TV-news trucks waited outside, Nancy Corran, 37, took holy orders on July 31 at the Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community, a five-year-old San Diego splinter parish with 150 members. Rome's latest decree, says Corran, "was outrageous even for the church." Says Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at the University of Notre Dame: "It's a sign the church knows this isn't going away."

That's the hope of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a group founded eight years ago in Europe. It has since ordained women like Lee and Corran in more than 20 American states and Canada. Womenpriests and other organizations promoting female Catholic clerics, like the Women's Ordination Conference, don't expect to change Vatican doctrine anytime soon. But their growing following signals that Catholics, already incensed by the never ending clerical sexual-abuse crisis, are losing patience with Rome's refusal to let women into the leadership of a church to which more than 20% of Americans belong. "We're the Rosa Parks of the Catholic Church," says Bridget Mary Meehan, a Womenpriests bishop and former nun. "We no longer accept second-class status in our own religion."

Where to begin? Well, first, if the Vatican does not recognize you as "a validly ordained Catholic priest," then you are not "a validly ordained Catholic priest." That should be simple enough for any idiot, even a reporter for TIME magazine, to understand. Second, there is nothing hysterical in the Vatican's "reaction" to this so-called movement. It is simply a restatement of basic church doctrine, the abandonment of which has always constituted a "grave crime." The fact that pedophilia falls under the same category is irrelevant to the discussion. Grave crimes can be moral, as well as doctrinal, in nature. Indeed, there is a profoundly "grave" moral dimension to the abandonment of unalterable church doctrine. But none of this is of any concern to the "Womenpriests" or their propagandists at TIME. All that matters to them is propping up an utterly insignificant fringe "movement" that is, in reality, not even on the Vatican's radar. Punctuating the fantasy is the article's final paragraph which exudes an optimism born of sheer delusion.

Numbers may force Rome's hand. Since 1985, the number of U.S. Catholic priests has plunged almost a third, to fewer than 40,000; more than 3,400 American parishes are without a resident priest, up from 1,051. To replenish the ranks, the church will probably let male priests marry before it ever ordains women. But the female priests say this should be about doing the right thing, not just the numerical thing. That's the chant from their makeshift altars — and with an unintentional assist from Rome, they're finally being heard.

Um, no. The only place they're being heard is in the press room at TIME. The rest of us live in the real world and those of us who have experienced firsthand the failed Protestant experiment in female ordination know that Hell will literally freeze over and nuns will skate on the ice before Rome makes the same mistake.

Are you telling me a priestess can't throw a curveball?

Mollie Hemingway at GetReligion illustrates the utter absurdity of the media's latest female ordination fantasy.

Time Magazine has an interesting story. Here’s how it begins:

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. Jacko says that playing baseball is what she was born to do.

Just kidding. Here’s how it actually begins:

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master’s degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says that being a priest is what she was called to do.

Really. That’s REALLY how the article “Efforts Rising to Ordain Women as Roman Catholic Priests” by Dawn Reiss begins. What to say other than … this is not true. There is no mother of eight children who is an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. How do I know this? Because I know that the church doesn’t ordain any female, whether they’ve gotten a degree from a Catholic university or not. Whether or not you are an “ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church” is similar to whether or not you are a starting pitcher for the Yankees. It’s not about what you feel called to do. It’s not about feelings at all. And a journalist can check out this fact just as easily as she can check out the roster for a baseball team.