Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese priest criticizes his bishop's leadership

Ditto. Thank you!

If anyone is irresponsible, I think it is Fr. Gilgannon. He made that letter public with a clear political motive. He knows that most readers will not read between the lines and research all the facts. He references "traditional" Catholic Social Teaching, but ignores the teachings of JP2, one of the most respected economists of our time. JP2 was exactly right about the inevitable failure of universal health care and so is Bishop Finn.
Bishop Finn has aligned his leadership against the calls by parish priests for parishioners to vote on many issues. That is not a problem at all. In the time of V2, when that call was made, abortion was not legal in most of the world. The fact is that 1 in 4 Americans are Catholic. If even 80% voted only on abortion, all parties would field pro-life candidates and it would "quickly" become illegal. Am I naive to think that I can make a difference and save lives this way? I think it's a defeatist attitude to give up and "vote our mind."
Fr. Gilgannon's calls against the Iraq war (which are, in fact, similar to JP2's) ignore the oppression and genocide that took place there. If anything, being pro-life means we should be entering Darfur.

It is statements like Fr. Gilgannon's that have caused the recent rift in the Church. What's sad is that this inevitably causes schism and self-excommunication (by parishioners). Take a look at the American Lutherans, for example (please ignore the conssubstantiationists of the Lutheran Church of Germany). They believe every dogmatic fact that the Catholic Church teaches, right down to transsubstantiationism, but they will never rejoin the Catholic Church. The devil is in the 400 years of details.
Be very careful not to preach politics in the name of religion. If you decide to back politics up with religion, that's okay, buy you must be prepared to argue your faith logically. I have to applaud Bishop Finn for his strong leadership in a time defined by politics, not faith.

Amen, thanks for your tactful and urgent voice.

Amen Fr G, thanks for your tactful and urgent voice.

Good thought,however it is already the Republican catholic Church and has been since the early 90's. A very good priest friend told me he was very concerned with the ultra conservative priests being assemblylined from the seminaries of that time, all of whom have now become the Bishop Finn's of these times. It seems the average Catholic is afraid to speak up since Communion will be held from them. Fear is the universal solver for dissent and the church is rampant with that today. We need to start forming viable groups or support groups like Call to Action. Where's a Martin Luther when you need him. Protestant Reformation...Nah, Catholic Reformation??? Yeah!!!

Dear Anonymous

Who do you think gets killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Has it ever occurred to you that lots of them are babies, children and pregnant women?

Your statement on health care is frightening. A good friend of mine died because she did not have health insurance. Millions have to go without the medicine and preventative health care they need because of attitudes like yours.

Steve

You accuse Father Gillgannon of "wandering blindly in [his] secular progressive notion". It appears to me that one could apply a similar criterion to your posting: you are applying your secular conservative notions to much of what you say. Your position on health care comes from a clear political position. You do not seem to be aware that emergency room health care is not free for most people, and it can hardly be considered adequate health coverage. Your positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are similarly politically alligned. Your assurance that you have access to the Truth is problematic. Here, on earth, we cannot know the mind of God and can only "see through the glass darkly". Father Gillgannon is not imposing his viewpoint on anyone; he is raising issues which need to be raised and is accepting the fact that we can disagree on many issues without ceasing to be Catholics.

Come on, 'Anonymous' if you are to criticize Fr Gillgannon, at least be as courageous to publicly say who you are and what's speaks in your heart. ...I'm proud that Fr Gillgannon wrote a much more pastoral letter than you without name-calling! (and at least he signed his name!)
Fr Gillgannon is an ordained and educated man in the church. He does not attack all, but has the courage to address his bishop.
"Anonymous" does not understand Social Catholic Teaching - or does not want to follow the Gospel. Pro-life is womb to tomb. Father is just pointing out the other prolife issues ignored by so many; he is not EQUATING military presence in Iraq & Afghansistan with abortion. Jesus would have challenges the likes of Bishop Finn and would probably be a liberal today!

Emergency Room care is the least efficient means of "providing" medical assistance, and the best way NOT to provide it.

Nearly 50 million people with no access to health care under our Nixonian for-profit only system unseen anywhere else in the world outside of prison??

This is a crime against humanity. This is a crime against God. This is a crime against Jesus Christ Our Lord, who demands ihs Apostles heal the sick, and impedes no one healing in His Holy Name.

Only republicans believe the human need for health care is nothing more but another way to make more money. Christians believe in the compassionate Love of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us give thanks for the Real Presence of Our Lord in this ANNUS SACERDOTALIS declared by Our Holy Father In Rome within the heart, mind and soul of such wise, holy, brilliant and excellent, loving and moral priests such as the Rev. Father Gillgannon.

frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)

Well, KC, you and Jesus would certainly disagree. He would oppose those saying that those without insurance can get care in emergency rooms, but not the quality of care the richer folk would get in or out of emergent conditions. The poor should only have health care in cases of emergency? He would not agree that killing one's enemies is ok, or that sinlessness is a criteria for being allowed to stay alive. Nor would he agree that any particular life is of more or less value than any other. He would certainly not agree that faith comes more from self righteousness than from communion! Fr. Gillgannon seems to me to be a Christian. You come off as a secularist--one who adopts the mores of a time over long established truth.

Baloney! This man has brass ones and isn't afraid to speak truth to phony power.

Anonymous/kc - you obviously have little real understanding of what happens when the poor and uninsured (and even the UNDERinsured) walk into ER's of any hospital in this country. Among other things, they wait many hours - and sometimes whole days - before being see. The level of care given them is appalling and follow-up care is nonexistent. Diagnostic tests are rarely used and thus many conditions are misdiagnosed, underdiagnosed, or not diagnosed at all. Patients are sent home, many times with perscriptions they don't have the money to purchase, and deveop more serious conditions. That is just a few examples of a very long list. And public hospitals struggle with providing even that level of care as they wind up in the red with no exrtra funds to access, while private hospitals (yes, even Catholic hospitals) now severely restrict - or completely restrict - the provision of free care. You have, for yourself, comfortably tagged this somehow as a liberal vs conservative issue. You are foolish to do so as you then do not have to deal with the pain of those among us who suffer. And is that not contrary to what Christ teaches us? Do yourself a favor, and go and sit in your local emergency room to see what it is like. I will bet that you will feel differently about the matter.

People who walk into 'any emergency room and not be turned away' have their medical bills paid by those using the same hospital who are insured, whose own charges are made higher accordingly, and are also paid by county funds. That is a 'tax' paid by the insured and by the county taxpayers. In hard times when the uninsured also live in economically challenged communities, the burden on already burdened local taxpayers goes up. To dismiss the problem on the basis of people being simply able to go the emergency room, is to be blind to the tax burden thereby created. If Wall Street excesses produce a national crisis, if the spiraling increases in insurance premiums is a national problem, why not a national solution?

Re Anonymous Sept. 15. When I was in the seminary, I learned that the most solemn Spirit-filled moment in the Church occurred at an ecumenical council. There was no council as spectacular as Vatican II, where the pope gathered in consultation with thousands of bishops from throughout the world. It never happened before on such grand scale.

Its impact on priest of my generation was like a thunder-clap. The Church had become a narrow medieval curiosity spouting answers to questions nobody was asking. Because of the Council, I felt liberated and a whole new future seemed to be opening in the Church.

Pope John Paul did everything possible to diminish its impact. This put me into a spiritual quandary: If the Spirit was not present in a great council, and its powerful aftermath, why should I believe the Spirit is present in the almost unreadable ponderings of Pope John Paul? And above all, why should I listen to a mere bishop who seems to imagine that he is the voice of God?

There are those who look like a priest but don't act like one. There are those that don't look like one but their thoughts, words and action prove it. One is the priest the other is the bishop.

Identified as a priest? What a blatantly stupid statement you made, Curious. Clothes make the man, right? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Even if he were wearing a "Roman" collar, you couldn't tell from his CLOTHES if he were a Roman Catholic priest, or the priest or minister of any one of a number of other Christian communions. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Aldus

I guess it's the collar or the mitre that makes the priest or the bishop. Wonder what St. Paul's friend Timothy would say to that.

Dear Curious
I came in from the fields where intermingled with the dirt are shards of the old Tlaxcalan pottery and statues of the people, destroyed by the Conquistadores in 1519 forward. The shards have been plowed into the ground many times over these centuries. And still some remain in recognizable polychrome and are often the cause of hyperfascination by tourists who want to piece them together to make them recognizable to themselves again... to match the pictures they've seen in magazines and in museums.

One of the farmers plowing the field in Tlaxcala, dressed like all the other farmer-plowers, with stringy huaraches, smell of masa on his breath, plastic water bottle tied to his waist with a frayed rope, torn white camisa, ragged white trousers, too short, taken from the mission basket. This is Father Alonso.

He is a priest. His brother, Carmone, is a priest in Haiti. He wears silver dreads now, and a battered straw hat made by the children of his parish.

Fathers Alonso and Carmone have a third brother, whose name I do not know. Their other brother has been ill and is in the little refuge of the local village seminary in a little room trying to recover.

Because he has diabetes, he cannot keep warm and so he wears a sweater knitted far larger than the shape of his little bones... but it was knitted by his mother, who with other elderly women, knits up shawls and sweaters and socks and hats and scarves for those who are ill, on chemo, have circulatory problems, have broken body thermostats.

It's an honor to wear, wrap oneself in the works that come from these women's hands. The third brother-priest also wears a knitted ski cap from time to time, for the same reason, to keep warm, even though he doesnt ski.

The old women do not knit mitres nor albs, nor cassocks, that I know of.

The priests whom you do not recognize as priests unless they 'look like' your idea of priest? Let me just say, you have likely overlooked many holy people in life if you only see priests who match your one picture of 'properly dressed priest.' I would gently wish otherwise for you. It's not too late to see holiness where and as it humbly stands before you, and to also hold to your personal fealty to your bishop as you wish.

Sarcasm is not a bright lantern for the suffering souls in our needful world; it is instead a lantern with its fire gone dark.

Just saying.

With kindest regards,
dr.e

dr.clarissa pinkola estés
columnist, NCRonline: El Rio Debajo del Rio, The River Beneath the River. "They Tried to Stop Her at The Border," http://ncronline.org/blogs/el-rio-debajo-del-rio

Wow - what a mature response!

This, folks, is a prime example why our lay leadership formation program needed and overhaul.

This lovely "lay leader" can't bring themselves to take classes on church history, the sacraments, the catechism, etc. because they don't want their "piece of mind" disturbed. Many in this diocese would rather politicize the faith, then to learn it's tenets and follow them.

Something I have been thinking about is that our country was formed as one of the People, FOR the people, BY the people so when the federal government helps insure that all people have some decent healthcare rather than just some of the people they are actually doing a good and right thing. As Jesus said whatever you do to the least of the people you do to Him. Do we really want to tell Jesus that he can't have healthcare in this wealthy country, that unless he's "somebody" he isn't worth helping?

If you are referring to our cathedral in KC, I hear you! I fortunately, do not attend mass there, so am not able to enjoy this spectacle fresh from the 1950's, but I really adore the porta-potty confessionals that litter the floor of the nave in that beautiful church. When I am there each year for the rite of election, I get some great one-liners out of seeing those bizarre items. Glory be, it would be funny, if it weren't so darn sad!

I'm sure Jesus had his back to his apostles at the Last Supper. :)