Tom Roberts's blog

She's 5 foot 4 and and says she'd need to lift weights to get back into her college playing shape, but 77-year-old Sr. Rose Ann Fleming has already been named Xavier University's most valuable player (1991) and to the Cincinnati Jesuit school's Hall of Fame (2000). Xavier is seeded sixth in the West Region of this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament.

The New York Times ran a front page story today featuring the work of Sr. Rose as the university's academic adviser for Xavier athletics. She's held the position since 1985 and apparently has no hesitation in waking up Division I stars and NBA-wannabes to ask about blown academic assignments.

It was apparent, just after the fall of Communism, that the "industrial" portion of the military industrial complex wasn't going to give up on the conflict that easily. War planners might change plans, politicians might alter their rhetoric, the world itself might breathe a bit easier as the nuclear clock eased back away from midnight. But the weapons' producers were another matter.

So it is good to see the church again, this time in Britain, stepping up to make the case against new generations of nuclear weapons. The group in Britain was advancing -- in dramatic fashion at the site of a nuclear weapons manufacturer -- the same point as that made last July by Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, former head of the Archdiocese for Military Services and now archbishop of Baltimore, to an audience of military and diplomatic officials.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful for the effort the Vatican and certain Irish bishops have already expended to deal with the clergy sex abuse crisis in the most forthright manner we've yet seen, the report of the meeting between the pope and the bishops was profoundly disappointing.

Some might consider that unjustifiably harsh, since the meeting was held behind closed doors and so it is impossible to know all of the details from a distance. However, church leaders were the ones who decided to hold the meeting in secret, so we are left to decipher the content from press dispatches and characterizations of the meeting, and we can only presume that all the public statements were hammered out and agreed upon by all parties present.

What results are statements that seem, given the magnitude of the offense, more self-serving than illuminating.

BishopAccountability.org, the Web site that has gathered the most comprehensive documentation available of the clergy sex abuse crisis, has just posted a history of the scandal as it occurred in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn.

Bishop Pierre Dumas, president of Caritas Haiti, met with Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday to report on the devastation in his country, urging that churches be rebuilt and that they have charitable facilities alongside them.

In a news conference arranged by the Sant’Egidio community in Rome, Dumas also updated the damage to the church. He said 15 churches, including the Cathedral, were destroyed in Port-au-Prince. He also said that more than 45 nuns, 20 religious seminarians and 30 diocesan seminarians had been killed in the Jan. 12 earthquake in addition to the archbishop, vicar and chancellor of the archdiocese.

Parish priests are being encouraged to stay with their people in the tent villages that have materialized throughout the city and to celebrate Mass in those locations.

Sunday Masses are being celebrated in improvised locations near the destroyed churches, he said. The church is giving special attention to hearing confessions and to providing help for psychologically traumatized people.

Dumas said he also told the pope that the archdiocese's seminary must be rebuilt so the church can begin educating priests again.

This morning I was reading this enlightening piece on the BBC Web site when I heard from a friend who told me of a small business owner who was puzzled that most people in his firm's work force oppose health care reform. He was puzzled about why his employes could be opposed to something that would so clearly be to their benefit.

The BBC story asks much the same question and reports some very interesting answers.

While reading this enlighting piece on the BBC Web site this morning I heard from a friend who told me about a small business owner who had complained that he couldn't get his small group of employes to rally around health reform. He couldn't understand how they could be so opposed to something that would greatly benefit them.

The BBC piece asks much the same question and receives some very interesting responses.

The awarding of the Cardinal John J. O'Connor Pro-Life Award by Legatus, a group of Catholic business professionals, to former President George W. Bush, is a graphic display of the limits of language and the degree to which our religion has become politicized.

The award, according to a posting by the Catholic News Agency, is given "for his work in advancing he pro-life cause."

Unless the language is inconsequential, those opposing abortion have limited, at least in this application, the term "pro life" to that cause alone. It would be one thing if Bush were being awarded for his "anti-abortion efforts," for he probably did more practically -- in opposing embryonic stem cell esearch, barring federal funds from use for abortion related projects abroad and appointing two ultra-conservative, anti-abortion Supreme Court justices -- than any president in recent memory to advance federal opposition to abortion.

On day two of his time in Haiti, filmmaker Gerry Straub was able to get out and about a bit in Port au Prince. Amid the devastation he continued to be struck by the selfless work of medical teams from around the world. Read the full report here.

He was shaken a bit when one doctor became angry at the presence of a camera at a particularly difficult moment inside the hospital where he is staying. The event led to a conversation with another doctor who, in an attempt to console and place things in perspective, told him a chilling story about his first half hour at the hospital.

Gerry and I are having several conversations a day and we usually wind things up in the evening with an overview of the day and his experiences. I'll keep posting each day as long as he's there and the phones continue working.

Today's posting also includes links to an eight-minute clip of the footage he took in Cite Soleil in early December, before the earthquake and to his San Damiano Foundation's website, which contains information on his earlier work.

Filmmaker Gerry Straub, who has created more than a dozen documentaries depicting the life of the poor around the globe, is currently in Haiti and will be phoning in reports during his time there.

His first report can be found under Haiti Dispatches on the front page of this site.

Straub began filming in Haiti in early December for a new documentary on the necessity of compassion. When the earthquake occurred he realized that the desperation of the moment in a country already poor beyond compare would have to be part of the story. So he hopped a plane with a group of doctors and nurses and made his way to Port au Prince on Jan. 21.

Straub has spent time in some of the most distressing locations in the United States, Latin America and Africa, but said the situation in Haiti at the moment is beyond anything he's ever seen. Each day I'll be posting the content of conversations we've had the day before. He has both a satellite phone and a cell phone and each works occasionally.

Following is a news release from Catholic Relief Services updating its Haiti efforts:

Baltimore, MD, January 13– Catholic Relief Services is readying food and other aid to help families affected by a powerful earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12. CRS has committed an initial $5 million (US) to help survivors of the devastating quake.

“This is a massive disaster,” says CRS’ Country Representative in Haiti, Karel Zelenka. “We should be prepared for thousands and thousands of dead and injured.” In a brief call on Tuesday night before phones went down, Zelenka described clouds of smoke surrounding Port-au-Prince and said, “I’ve experienced earthquakes before, but I never felt anything like this. This is a major hit. And it was direct.”

While the CRS office in Port-au-Prince is undamaged, a building directly across from it collapsed. CRS has approximately 340 staffers in Haiti, of which 120 are in Port-au-Prince. Many staffers slept outside on Tuesday night to avoid building collapses from aftershocks.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, Catholic Relief Services made an initial commitment of $5 million for immediate relief, an amount that will probably rise significantly, according to John Rivera, director of communications for CRS in Baltimore.

Rivera said the agency has “pre-positioned” emergency supplies in Haiti for about 5,000 people. The supplies, which include kitchen kits of pots and pans, food, hygiene kits and temporary shelter, is already in place because Haiti “is so disaster prone.”

Supplies for another 2,500 people will be trucked in from neighboring Dominican Republic, he said.

CRS international staff in Haiti, said Rivera, stayed at the agencies office in Port au Prince the night after the quake, but slept outside on the ground because of the aftershocks. A building across the street from the office had collapsed.

The day after the quake, he said, it was difficult to begin to assess the dimensions of the disaster because of the lack of communications and because the basic infrastructure in Port au Prince was poor to nonexistent even before the shock.

The Jan. 12 news that a 7.0 earthquake had hit Haiti near the capital city of Port au Prince held a special poignancy for me because I had just finished writing a story for NCR about an October trip I took to Haiti’s northern section and the Dominican Republic.

Marquette University's Institute for Natural Family Planning (NFP) is looking for couples interested in preventing pregnancy. They're needed to participate in a study involving two Web-based methods of natural family planning.

Here's my latest installment in this ongoing series. This story features a group of twenty-somethings, living in community and exploring the “new
monasticism,” a term that is difficult to precisely define but that roughly describes a search occurring in communities, ironically often of Protestant evangelicals, that have formed with a strong focus on social justice and reforming Christian practice.

On of the people in the feature, Chris Haw, describes the new monasticism as “somewhere between a monastery and a potluck dinner.”

Here's the full story: A place for renegades: Community confronts the 'dark side of the American dream'

Religious women today facing the disapproval and scrutiny of officials in Rome might take some consolation from the life of the Venerable Mary Ward, founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known in the United States as the Loreto sisters. In the 17th century, when she wanted to form an unenclosed order of women, she was too far ahead of her time. Rome not only balked at the idea, but at one point accused her of heresy.

Recognition of her efforts came slowly. On Dec. 19, Pope Benedict declared her venerable, an early step on the way to sainthood.

Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, former master general of the Dominican Order, said the the clergy sex abuse scandal now rocking the church in Ireland, is more "a crisis of clerical culture" than it is a crisis of sexual abuse.

My story about Fr. Michael Doyle and Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, N.J., which appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of National Catholic Reporter can be found here: A Love For Transformation.

My extended interview with extraordinary priest can be found here: A conversation with Fr. Michael Doyle.

21st in the series

In mid August, I spent a day with Fr. Michael Doyle at his parish, Sacred Heart Church in Camden, N.J. He’s been there for 35 years and has become a bit of a legend in the city and well beyond for innovative ministries and for programs that have begun to transform areas of South Camden. He and I had a long conversation, only portions of which could be used in the profile that appeared in the print edition of NCR and online. (See A love for transformation) as part of my "In Search of the Emerging Church" series.

I thought many readers would enjoy his more extended comments about such matters as the nature and purpose of a parish, his view on art and beauty, on peacemaking, liturgy and on honoring the poor. Below is an edited version of the conversation. As possible, I’ve tried to break up the interview into topic sections.

--Tom Roberts, NCR editor at large

For months, Catholics in Ireland's Archdiocese of Dublin have been bracing themselves for release of a government report on decades of sexual abuse of children by priests and cover up of the abuse by the hierarchy.

Catholics in the United States will find much familiar about the reports of abuse -- the patterns of grooming, of brutality, of cover up and of payoff. Strikingly different, however, from what we've become accustomed to hearing from members of the hierarchy in the United States has been the reaction of the current cardinal archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. Read the full text of his statement here.

In part, he said:

"The sexual abuse of a child is and always was a crime in civil law; it is and always was a crime canon law; it is and always was grievously sinful.

20th in the series

One of the privileges of getting out and around the Catholic community reporting on The Emerging Church series has been the opportunity to meet up with a new generation of Catholics who carry a deep witness to some of the most troubled corners of the country.

Patrick Keenan is one of them. He comes out of a Franciscan formation and a serious understanding and experience of the Catholic social justice tradition.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama, Sojourner's Jim Wallis and a number of other progressive religious leaders urge the president to take a new approach to the conflict in that country.

19th in the series

Camden, N.J., is a place where a parish holds services to remember the tens of kids killed by gunshot and other violent means, a roll call of the dead of this peculiar urban warfare. Pick any day, any hour and drive past corners where the posture of the kids and their blank eyes say hopelessness.

Read the full story here: A place that breaks the poverty cycle

While most Americans oppose government funding of abortion, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that concern about abortion funding plays only a small role in driving opposition to the health care reform legislation under consideration by Congress.

From the University of Florida comes a report of a new study that sees evidence of a vital "religious left," and one that already has had an effect on national voting.

It is unfortunate that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, new to the national stage and responsible for one of the most visible and potentially most influential sees in the nation, chose to play the tired anti-Catholic card so early in his tenure. His recent blog posting accused The New York Times and the wider culture of indulging in rampant anti-Catholic activity.

In doing so, he wastes the authority of his office by aligning it with such imprudent screamers as William Donohue and his Catholic League, which exists to raise money so it can continue to scream Fire! in the crowded theater of overcharged religionists.

The reality is, of course, that it is increasingly difficult to establish an anti-Catholic case of any substance or depth in the culture when so much -- industry, politics, finance, academia, the Supreme Court itself -- is in the hands of high-profile Catholics.

Arcbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, recently made a defense of the church's handling of the priest sex abuse crisis by citing suspect numbers and by pointing the finger at other denominations, largely on the basis of an article in The Christian Science Monitor.

Following is a response from Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, the canon lawyer who distinguished himself in the mid-1980s by defying the ecclesiastical strategies of the day and strongly coming to the defense of victims of abuse.

18th in the series

For Jesuit Fr. Jeff Putthoff, his ministry at a Camden, N.J., a technology training center, is his declaration about the future of the church as well as his answer, for the moment, to unsettling questions he poses to himself about what it means to be a priest and to be a Jesuit. They become particularly pressing questions in this era of dwindling numbers and resources, a time he refers to as a period of “diminishment.”

Read the full story here: Hopeworks 'n Camden

"The revered reputations of four of the most powerful Irish churchmen of recent times will take a hefty unspiritual nosedive with the imminent publication of most of the horrific findings of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin," writes John Cooney, a columnist for the Irish Independent.