Tom Roberts's blog

In the aftermath of the administration of George W. Bush, it is inevitable that the truth would keep leaching to the surface. The latest contribution apparently comes in a new book by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership,” to be released later this month. In the book Powell reportedly states that no considered debate ever occurred in the Bush White House about whether going to war with Iraq was a good idea.

Huffington Post's Dan Froomkin reviews the book today, and connects some of the dots from that period in history.

And two paragraphs that sum up the awful cost of that abuse of power and military miscalculation have to leave one wondering whether we'd be trying to figure our way out of such a persistent economic recession if more sophisticated and prudent minds had prevailed in 2002-03.

Perhaps it should surprise no one, given the byzantine culture of Catholic hierarchy and Vatican bureaucracy, that just beneath the surface of the most recent attack on LCWR, one might find evidence of Cardinal Bernard Law, whose gross mishandling of the sex abuse crisis fairly upended the venerable church of Boston, and Archbishop William Lori, the fiery point man in the episcopacy’s religious liberty campaign and recently rewarded with the prestigious Baltimore see.

It is one of the ongoing curiosities – pointed out abundantly on this site and within the pages of NCR – that those who have caused the greatest scandal and damage to the church are those who still sit in judgment of all else in the community. And they are using their prerogatives, which they bestow upon themselves and are available only to those within the secretive, all-male, celibate world of Catholic hierarchy, to flail about, pointing up dangers and faults they are seeing all about them, in others and in endless other sectors of the Catholic community.

This sad story of student loan debt delaying dreams of a vocation as a sister intersects with several current stories: the need to provide assistance for college, including low interest loans, and the enormous sums paid by church leaders related to the ongoing sex abuse scandal.
According to the story:

The study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, released this year, found 69 percent of religious orders “turned away at least one person because of student loans. In addition, many religious communities ask young people to delay their applications to enter because of educational debt.”

Kathy Kelly reports after a Skype conversation with a young Afghan Peace Volunteer named Hakim

April 20, 2012

Last weekend, in Kabul, Afghan Peace Volunteer friends huddled in the back room of their simple home. With a digital camera, glimpses and sounds of their experiences were captured, as warfare erupted three blocks away.

Two Afghan youth taking refuge together with the Afghan Peace Volunteers
The fighting has subdued, but the video gives us a glimpse into chronic anxieties among civilians throughout Afghanistan. Later, we learned more: Ghulam awakens suddenly, well after midnight, and begins to pace through a room of sleeping people, screaming. Ali suddenly tears up, after an evening meal, and leaves the room to sit outside. Staring at the sky and the moon, he finds solace. Yet another puzzles over what brings people to the point of loaning themselves to possibly kill or be killed, over issues so easily manipulated by politicians.

The Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger, who previously covered the Vatican for The New York Times, weighs in on the most recent hierarchical attempts to rein in the good sisters.

"Traditional Catholicism is winning," blared a headline on a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Anne Hendershott and Christopher White.

Whether that conclusion is warranted only time, and what one means by "traditional Catholicism," will tell. It is the claims underpinning the conclusion that merit comment. "There were 467 new priestly ordinations in the U.S. last year, and Boston's seminary had to turn away applicants," read the subhead beneath the declaration that traditional Catholicism was racking up the most points on the ecclesial scoreboard.

The article went on to note that a new seminary was being built in North Carolina and that Boston's seminary was so full it had to turn applicants away. And, it reported, there were 5,000 more priests worldwide in 2009 than there were in 1999.

Problem solved, right?

When I read the piece, which is whipping 'round the ether, I contacted Mary Gautier, senior research associate at the Center for Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Fr. Michael Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, Wash., reportedly was given the choice -- as were all pastors in the archdiocese -- to decide whether to distribute a petition to repeal the state's marriage equality law, which permits same sex marriage. He chose not to. Read more here.

Just came across this wonderful essay from The Jesuit Post of March 26 by Jesuit Fr. Michael C. McCarthy SJ, a reflection spurred by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Rick Santorum's indictment of colleges as a place where lose their faith.

Here's a bit of it:

We should not be surprised that college is the context where such a turn often takes place. On that point I am fairly confident that Mr. Santorum is right. I’m just not sure it is helpful either to blame liberal professors or imply that the godless academy undermines religious values. Much less should we blame the students themselves!

In fact, I would argue that college is not only a place where young people lose faith. It’s also a place where they find it. Maybe the real problem is that this new found, college-influenced faith of the young looks a little different than what their parents were expecting. And that’s a familiar story for at least one reason: it’s mine.

Read the entire piece here.

While the high-profile legal proceedings involving former archdiocesan official Msgr. William Lynn and two co-defendants grind on, Archbishop Charles Chaput has established a long-planned Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and outlined new measures for financial transparency.

Working in reverse, here's the link to Grant Gallicho's superb reading of the record on the Commonweal site on Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., newly appointed as archbishop of Baltimore.
It will provide links to the original article in America magazine that started the back and forth. It appears it may be tough to be a culture warrior when dragging behind a past of "prudential" judgments.

Why? It's an interesting question and Washington Post writers Don Balz and Scott Clement dig into exit polls from recent primary contests for insight. Their findings might not surprise the average Catholic in the pew. In a word, Santorum (and for that matter Newt Gingrich) is not representative of most Catholics, and there are far fewer presumptions about what it means to be Catholic and what that designation means in terms of voting preferences than once may have been the case.
Read the whole thing here.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, with its roots deep in the soil of a secretive, authoritarian, Irish Catholicism, produced a tightly wound clerical culture unparalleled in this country for its loyalty to itself.

When it comes to clericalism, with its unwritten but clearly understood code of the bishop as prince with the power to bend the culture to his will through the distribution of benefices and punishments, with the means to exact unfailing loyalty, “Philly” was always in a league of its own.

The culture is unraveling there, and has been since District Attorney Lynne Abraham decided in 2003 to impanel a grand jury, even though the statutes of limitation would probably prevent her from bringing charges, to look into the matter of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests.

The resultant history is well known – an unprecedented documentation of inner church workings, of unimaginable crimes against children, of cover up and shuffling of abusive priests from parish to parish with no warning to the affected congregations.

Sandro Magister writes about the continuing changes to the Legion of Christ being arranged by Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, the pontifical delegate to whom Benedict XVI has given full power to remake the scandal-plagued religious order and its associated lay movement Regnum Christi, with its hundreds of consecrated men and women.

The incomparable Garry Wills, in the New York Review of Books, on the current flap over religious liberty and contraception.

Here's a taste:
"The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a “conscience exemption.” It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom. ...

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, February 14, 3:14 PM

VATICAN CITY — The female branch of the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ religious order was in turmoil Tuesday following the resignation of its leader and the decision of some 30 members to split from the movement.

Malen Oriol announced in a letter Sunday that she had asked to resign as the assistant to the general director of the Legion, which Pope Benedict XVI took over in 2010 after the order revealed its late founder had sexually molested seminarians and fathered three children.

Read the entire story here.

February 14, 2012

It's Valentine's Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing "why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart."

Here in Dubai, where I’m awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago, eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under 5 have frozen to death in the camps.

And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one under 14 years of age, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep. French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed. (Trend News, February 10, 2012).

Columnist E.J. Dionne, in today's Washington Post, provides a lucid explanation of why a lot of liberal Catholics lined up to criticize the narrow Health and Human Services religious exception on covering contraceptives. And he explains why so many liberals stay put in a denomination with which they might have major disagreements on some issues.

In part, he writes: "Those of us who are liberal Catholics have remained in the church for reasons beyond tribal loyalties or a desire to honor the traditions of our parents and grandparents. At the heart of the love many of us have for the church — despite our frustrations over its abysmal handling of the pedophilia scandal and its reluctance to grant women the rights they are due — is a profound respect for the fact on so many questions that count, Catholicism walks its talk and harnesses its faith to the good works the Gospel demands."

Read Amy Sullivan, via RNS's David Gibson, who said her column "makes the most sense of anything I've read," which is about as generous an endorsement as one might expect. You'll find her column here.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican official and now U.S. nuncio, denounced corruption in the management of the Holy See according to letters he sent the pope, the contents of which were published today in the Italian press. In the letters, Vigano reportedly said his transfer to the U.S. was a "punishment" that caused concern among others who saw an opportunity to clean up Vatican waste and corruption.
Read more here.

It's a long way to November and the vote in Minnesota over an amendment to the state constitution that would limit marriage to one man and one woman. The Catholic church has joined battle with gay rights forces in what could be a protracted battle to persuade the public.

The push back, however, is not confined to those outside the church. Catholics for Marriage Equality MN strongly oppose the measure and are mounting a strong campaign against its passage. And among clergy, one especially outspoken pastor, Fr. Michael Tegeder, has held his ground despite threats to his ministry from his archbishop.

As 2011 was coming to a close, Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul, was ramping up a campaign that had actually begun in earnest in September of last year when the archdiocese sent out 400,000 DVDs, paid for by an anonymous donor, explaining church teaching on the matter and urging that an amendment be put to a vote.

In October of this year, bishops urged priests throughout the state to form committees to help get the proposed amendment approved.

My initial reaction, upon reading of the Marines who urinated on dead Taliban fighters, was of course to be repulsed by one more graphic display of the barbarism of war being conducted on our behalf. But that initial reaction was quickly followed by an almost automatic question: What do we expect?

What can we expect, indeed, of young men trained to dehumanize others to a degree that they can methodically and clinically kill complete strangers? Presumably, that is what these young soldiers did to the dead fighters not long before the video was taken. Do we expect young men who have pulled the trigger one moment to conduct somber, religious graveside services the next?

It is good to note that somewhere between Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s rush to politicize the matter (he says the Obama administration’s expression that the act is deplorable shows the president has “disdain” for the military) and those who wish swift and harsh punishment for the young Marines, we’ve found some space to acknowledge that the real issue can be found in the horrors of combat and what they can do to a young person’s mind and perspective.

By Kathy Kelly, with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

January 3, 2012

Kabul - Bibi Sadia and her husband Baba share a humble home with their son, his wife and their two little children. An Afghan human rights advocate suggested that we listen to Bibi’s stories and learn more about how a Pashto family has tried to survive successive tragedies in Kabul.

Holding her three year old granddaughter in her arms, Bibi adjusted her hijab and launched into a narrative that began during the Soviet occupation. The mujahideen had asked Baba to bring them medicines two or three times a week for those injured in the war. For each batch of medicines that Baba delivered, the mujahideen paid him a small sum of money. When the Russian occupiers discovered what he was doing, they beat him severely. After that, the mujahideen accused him of spying for the Russians and they also beat him badly.

The vicious beatings gave him perforated ear drums requiring six operations and left him permanently hard of hearing.

(Kathy Kelly writes from Kabul, Afghanistan. See her Christmas reflection here.)

December 27, 2011

Kabul--Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of
winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for
Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the
creative and determined "Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers" who’ve risked so
much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Our apartment doesn’t have indoor heating or hot tap water. We bundle up,
overnight, in blankets, quilts and sleeping bags, and the Westerners,
unaccustomed to the indoor cold, wear at least five layers of clothing
during the daytime. Tap water is contaminated, electricity shortages are
frequent, and internet access is spotty, but compared to those who live in
Kabul’s refugee camps, we’re ensconced in plenty of creature comforts.

What’s more, we are warmed by a sense of shared purpose, our spirits high,
building and exploring relationships which are a model and a hope to us, in

I first became aware of Kathy Kelly during a phone call some months before the first part of the war against Iraq. Back then it was called the Persian Gulf War, and it began in August of 1990 and ended the following February.

During the phone call, she told me that a group of pacifists was going to camp on one of the borders of Iraq, intent on witnessing to what she believed was the futility of war and generally to get in the way of warmaking in some small way by being where she wasn't supposed to be.

I listened, wondering about the sanity of the person on the other end of the
line. But over the years I've grown to think that, for the most part, she's one of the sanest and bravest people I know. She's usually where governments would rather she not be, getting to know people who are otherwise considered either enemies or mere ciphers in the calculation of war's collateral damage, witnessing always to deep truths of the gospel that normally get shoved to the background in the shouted "religious" discourse of one or another of the culture wars.

William Bole, a friend and former colleague, has always demonstrated a great gift for understanding the connections among ideas and actors in the religion world and for relating those connections with a storyteller’s instinct and wit.

I worked with him for a number of years (he was Washington correspondent at the time) during my stint at Religion News Service in New York and often marveled at his ability to join a certain gentleness to a critical and unblinking approach to news.

He’s recently begun a blog, Theopol, and it is a worn description to those who know him to describe his new venture as “thoughtful,” but that’s what it is, far more thoughtful than most efforts one comes across in the ether. Take a look. He’s just posted a different take on seasonal consumerism – and don’t cringe. You won’t be preached at; you may be encouraged to think, gently, about what’s going on. Check it out: http://williambole.com/body-and-soul-in-the-checkout-line/

As much as I’ve recently voiced skepticism over the bishops’ new “religious liberty” initiative, I also think colleague Michael Sean Winters has put it as plainly as possible that the Obama administration has a significant choice to make, and if it goes the wrong way it could be costly in the Catholic world.

By way of the new and vaunted “religious liberty” effort, I think it is a thinly disguised – and potentially very costly in multiple ways -- effort to reclaim the credibility that has profusely leaked in recent decades from the episcopal culture. The point to be made in that instance is that the bishops are receiving a great deal of the pushback from Catholic politicians and the Catholic public. The problem is that the bishops have not made a persuasive case in the sex and gender issues they find most disturbing. And while they may point to relativism, secularism, a hyper-sexed society and whatever other ills they perceive lurking about, the fact o f the matter is they have mostly themselves to blame for their decreased standing in the general culture.

Don't wish to be redundant, but for those who haven't caught the latest on colleague Michael Sean Winters' blog, I'd like to call attention to the recent appearance by John Gehring, senior writer and Catholic outreach coordinator for Faith in Public Life, on MSNBC.

He was interviewed about the U.S. bishops' initiative on religious freedom. The point is, agree or not -- and in this case I more agree with Gehring than not -- he has become one of the public voices in the Catholic world that has come to the fore in the aftermath of the 2004 election when the far right seemed to own the only religious interpretation of events.

Another of those groups is Catholic Democrats, who issued a detailed plea that was posted elsewhere on these pages to the U.S. bishops to address poverty.

I have to thank Dan Rather for the shout out. It occurs at the end of this clip.
The analysis he refers to is here. And you'll understand, of course, that he meant National Catholic Reporter.

The following letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan from Catholic Democrats was delivered to Baltimore Waterfront Marriott, where the Bishops' Fall General Assembly gathered from Monday to Wednesday.