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PDF version+Dolan's First Presidential Address
by Michael Sean Winters on Nov. 14, 2011
Archbishop Timothy Dolan delivered his first presidential address to the full plenary of the USCCB today since taking the helm of the bishops’ conference last year.
“Love for Jesus and His Church must be the passion of our lives,” Dolan began, quoting Blessed John Paul II, moving into a discourse on the necessary connection between Christ and the Church, quoting the great theologian Henri deLubac, “For what would I ever know of Him, without her?” Dolan acknowledged the difficulty this linkage has faced in recent years, saying, “Because, as the chilling statistics we cannot ignore tell us, fewer and fewer of our beloved people – to say nothing about those outside the household of the faith – are convinced that Jesus and His Church are one.”
Many commentators anticipated Dolan would discuss the issue of religious liberty at some length, but it was scarcely mentioned in his text. Instead, he focused on the need for the Church to focus on evangelization and a re-presentation of the Church as the vehicle for the encounter with Christ: “The Church we passionately love is hardly some cumbersome, outmoded club of sticklers, with a medieval bureaucracy, silly human rules on fancy letterhead, one more movement rife with squabbles, opinions, and disagreement. The Church is Jesus – teaching, healing, saving, serving, inviting; Jesus often ‘bruised, derided, cursed, defiled.’”
Dolan went on to acknowledge some of the problems facing the Church. “Since we are a spiritual family, we should hardly be surprised that the Church has troubles, problems…As Dorothy Day remarked: ‘The Church is the radiant bride of Christ; but her members at times act more like the scarlet women of Babylon.’” Dolan also quoted his mentor, the late Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, noting that Ellis “used to introduce his courses on Church history, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to discover that the Mystical Body of Christ has a lot of warts.’ And we passionately love our bride with wrinkles, warts and wounds all the more.”
If some were expecting a declaration of war against the Obama administration on the issue of religious liberty, this was not it.
ROMAN CLIQUE FEARS ?
ROMAN CLIQUE FEARS ? .............. Thanks, MSW, but after the head of the US bishops, NY's Dolan's "private" meeting last week following the Penn State bombshell with President Obama, it appears the Roman clique may now have told the US bishops to slow down the "religious liberty" charade designed to elect a "lower taxes on the Catholic !
Obama has since the Dolan meeting publicly and boldly declared that the protection of defenseless children from sexual abuse is a primary priority. His Federal prosecutors have also weighed in with a major prosecution of the KC priest at the center of KC's Finn's state prosecution, as well as the Federal investigation of Penn State's child sexul abuse scandal. Bad news for bishops.The Roman clique and their US puppet bishops appear now to be running scared.
For more information on the Roman clique and the US puppet bishops' fears of an Obama escalation of Federal child abuse prosecutions, please note the NCR comment and related cross links under the comment heading, "US ELECTION AND SEX ABUSE WAR", accessible by clicking on at:
http://ncronline.org/news/politics/obama-meets-quietly-head-us-bishops
For more information on the US bishops' election year charade, its "religious liberty" campaign to elect a "lower taxes on the Catholic 1%" Republican US president next November, please note the NCR comment and related cross links under the comment heading, "USCCB SPIN AND REALITY" , accessible by clicking on at:
http://ncronline.org/news/politics/bishops-gear-fight-obama
“The Church we passionately
“The Church we passionately love is hardly some cumbersome, outmoded club of sticklers, with a medieval bureaucracy, silly human rules on fancy letterhead, one more movement rife with squabbles, opinions, and disagreement."
That may not be the church you love, Archbishop Dolan. But is the church most of us poor, benighted, underclass lay folk encounter daily. Why don't you and your fellow male caste members climb down from your episcopal thrones, doff the lace and silk duds and muck it up with us in the real world? If ever a privileged class existed, it is the catholic clergy!
Bishops break out in shingles
Bishops break out in shingles in the face of ambiguity; laity live with it each day in their homes, jobs and social life.
Chancery offices constantly view the faithful as so befuddled that, without unctuous instruction, they would confuse the holy water fountain with a birdbath.
Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, not to bend over.
“Love for Jesus and His
“Love for Jesus and His Church must be the passion of our lives,” Dolan began, quoting Blessed John Paul II, moving into a discourse on the necessary connection between Christ and the Church, quoting the great theologian Henri deLubac, “For what would I ever know of Him, without her?”
The Church is long past the old days of the true heart and spirituality of the early Church in which we could boast about its leaders who were both men and women who learned and taught the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.
The Church has changed and not for the better because its hierarchy has lost The Way and the living word is not in them. Its teachers and theologians are thrown out and discarded along political lines of thought and political agendas for the hierarchy.
Dorothy Day was a real Church member who built up the Church on the fringes. We're not seeing the hierarchy do much but meddle and make insane new rules for the laity to live by, while the hierarchy party hardy and take care of their own personal needs while the laity and the poor do the real work of the Church.
AB Dolan and the Bishops should reflect on the meaning of "Church" especially for the victims of sexual molestation by priests, for God's sake, and SERIOUSLY address the issue and quit with the lies and deceit!! Ask them what they learned about that "Church" that none who truly Love Jesus should ever defend and/or promote those, such as JPII and Benedict XVI did who both turned a blind eye to pedophile priests and didn't give a hoot about the children and indications are still do not in any active sense. With the facts of JPII there is no defense for the Church in making him Blessed. Defending that kind of Church is immoral and insane.
And please reflect on the current kind of Church you are defending that the People of God are witnessing from the Church hierarchy which includes: defending a Church hierarchy that condones gay bashing, misogyny, protecting and hiding priest child rapist & elevating Cardinal Law to a lifestyle of the privileged class, while excommunicating nuns and priests who defend the idea of women priests!!
And please reflect on the greedy appetite for wealth by the bishops, while ignoring the poor and marginalized, denying the civil rights of minority groups and aligning with the powers in the world of wealth, obtaining lobbyist for a privileged class against 99% of the rest of us. The Bishops do not demonstrate that they care in the least for the People of God and are politically allying with the interest of the most wealthy. That is a pitiful disgrace of a position for priests & Bishops to have which is blatantly against the People of God and His children.
Shame on you Dolan and the Bishops and your not honoring Jesus Christ and His teachings. The rules apply to you too. You can't keep hiding what everyone else knows.
The party's over boys.
The party's over boys.
In my modest opinion, {‘ll
In my modest opinion, {‘ll stick with the Gospel. Jesus never asked anyone to love him, but rather he said “Love one another, just as I have loved you. ... WHATEVER YOU DO TO THE LEAST OF THESE MY LITTLE ONES, YOU DO UNTO ME.”
What Dolan calls the “passion of our lives of”, in my opinion really ought to be THE REASON FOR THE PASSION, DEATH, RESURRECTION AND PRESENCE OF JESUS IN OUR LIVES which is His life plan: “Abbá, Father, thy Kingdom come on earth just as it is in heaven.” – We must be willing to buy into his life program, to be his true followers, to CARRY OUT HIS MISSION: That “other possible society”, that “other possible world” so unlike the world we have fashioned for ourselves where every 4 seconds one of our sisters or brothers dies of hunger, we go along with wars with the death of millions of civilians as “collateral damage” just as we continue to destroy our own Dear Mother Earth by our greed.
My grand-daddy patron, St. Justin, Martyr and “Father of the Church”, who died in the year 165 during the honey-moon of Christianity, called the Church “The Great Prostitute of Christ” because even then already there was a seeking for power.
I quote, also from memory, Dorothy Day saying that at times it is “the Church (not “her members”) who acts more like a whore than a mother”.
Justiniano de Managua el 14 nov. 2011
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