RC Bishop on RC need to Reform
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:57 am
Spong praises the courage of this most loved Ausralian RC hiearchial, and quotes him below:
To read Spong's full article, try this: support@johnshelbyspong.com I hope it will connect?? He concludes:
Could one of such courage emerge from within Mormonism to call LDSism to acknowledge, and correct, its "bads"?? Warm regards, Roger
A Voice Within the Catholic Hierarchy Finally Speaks Out
"The Pope has too much power. The Pope is finally answerable to the Church."
"The Catholic Church has a problem with credibility."
"The Church's teaching on sex needs to be reviewed."
"Seminaries are not healthy places."
"A few phrases in the Nicene Creed need to be revisited"
"There are homosexual priests in the Catholic Church - a significant number probably higher than the percentage (of homosexual persons) in the general population."
These quotations are not lifted from the writings of some anti-Catholic Protestant reformer. It was no modern day Martin Luther or John Calvin who said these things; it was not even some Catholic-baiting Irish preacher like Ian Paisley. They are rather the words of a highly respected Roman Catholic Bishop in Sydney, Australia, who was such a significant leader in the Church that he was the one to whom the Catholic Church turned to investigate the sex abuse scandal involving priests in Australia and to issue that Church's national response to that tragedy. His name is The Most Reverend Geoffrey Robinson. His official title at the time of his recent retirement was The Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney. He was by any measure Australia's best known and most admired member
To read Spong's full article, try this: support@johnshelbyspong.com I hope it will connect?? He concludes:
... the power of religion in general and of the Catholic Church in particular is not today anywhere near what it used to be in the western world. Europe, once a Catholic stronghold now has the lowest birth rate in the world, indicating that Europeans do not listen to the Vatican's condemnation of birth control. The nation of Ireland, whose deepest identity once reflected the influence of the Roman Catholic tradition, is now moving to legalize abortion. Catholic couples get divorced in the West in about the same percentages as do non-catholic couples. This is not the 13th century and some Catholic hierarchical figures appear not to recognize that fact. Second, the spread of information today makes institutional secrets fair game for full exposure. Ecclesiastical closets will not remain closed. Corruption and criminal behaviour are not conditional on whether the perpetrator is a priest, a bishop an archbishop or a cardinal. Yet we witnessed Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston not being prosecuted despite massive evidence of his guilt of being an accomplice in crimes against thousands of minors. Instead of jail, he was promoted to a Vatican post in the Papal States where he is immune from prosecution and will never have to answer questions under oath or release the records which would prove his complicity. Instead of being forgotten he has become today nothing less than the public face of that Church's corruption. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles just this past fall agreed to pay $696,000,000, on the day before the trial was to begin to settle the class action suit brought by the victims of priestly abuse. This last minute settlement represented resistance and cover-up, not co-operation in the face of criminal judgement, and let them off from the task of testifying publicly under oath. This fine was of such magnitude, that the imagination is stunned to embrace the depth of guilt that it revealed. Los Angeles Cardinal, Roger Mahoney, said, "we have now put this behind us," but he will discover that un-investigated evil is not cauterized by legal settlements that do not admit guilt. The details will continue to seep out. The disillusionment will continue to grow. People know that there was no real co-operation with the investigation. Catholic hierarchical figures have done little more than damage control, placing the well-being of the Catholic Church far ahead of the well-being of the victims of the Catholic Clergy. A genuine reform is clearly not forthcoming at this time.
Geoffrey Robinson offers a way to begin that necessary act of reformation. He believes a first step is to restore power to the bishops, which he argues has in recent years been drained from them into the upper echelons of the hierarchy and especially to the Pope. If nothing changes, those bishops who raise questions publicly in this Church will be silenced and marginalized in the same way that their creative, but questioning theologians were handled over the last thirty or so years. Remember this is the same church that removed Hans King from his position as Catholic Theologian at Tubingen University, harassed Dutch New Testament Scholar Edward Schillebeeckx until he was drained of both his time and energy, dismissed tenured professor Charles Curran from the faculty of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., silenced Matthew Fox when he developed his new spirituality based on original blessing rather than original sin until he finally resigned his priesthood and became an Anglican in California, and then drove the Latin American theologian, Leonardo Boff, into his decision to be laicized. It was Joseph Ratzinger, serving as the Cardinal Inquisitor for Pope John Paul II, who was responsible for these actions. Now as Pope Benedict XVI, does anyone think it will be different if any bishop does not toe the line on all doctrinal, ethical and ecclesiastical issues? Creative change never arises from within when truth is suppressed and new ideas are never entertained. Geoffrey Robinson's great contribution is that he has broken the silence. He has called for the development of some mechanism that would make the Church accountable to the people. He believes that the 19th century dogma of papal infallibility should be revisited, that the church's whole attitude toward sexuality ought to be reviewed, and that Catholic scholarship needs to engage contemporary knowledge that it has not done since before the days of Galileo. My hope is that other bishops, who will inevitably hear about and read this powerful book, will recognize the truth and accuracy of Geoffrey Robinson's insights, that these issues will then be raised and examined inside that church's gathering of bishops, and that steps at reforming this church will be allowed to begin. My fear is that this Church, like so much of Christianity. is blind to its own incompetence and its fortress morality, which means that it will fail to see that these troubling symptoms are nothing less than the signs of death encircling this once great Church.
John Shelby Spong
Could one of such courage emerge from within Mormonism to call LDSism to acknowledge, and correct, its "bads"?? Warm regards, Roger