NOTABLES - People who make the news, not necessarily Church-related

Vatican says it hopes Iraq does not execute Tariq Aziz

By Catholic News Service
Oct. 26, 2010

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican hopes the death penalty will not be carried out against former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, 74, said the Vatican spokesman.

"The position of the Catholic Church on the death penalty is known," the spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Oct. 26, the day the Iraqi high court sentenced Aziz to death by hanging.

"Therefore, it is truly to be hoped that the sentence against Tariq Aziz will not be carried out, precisely in order to favor reconciliation and the reconstruction of peace and justice in Iraq after the great suffering it has undergone," he said.

Father Lombardi said the Vatican might use diplomatic channels to intervene in the case.

The court sentenced Aziz, a Catholic who also served as foreign minister for then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, for persecution of Shiite religious parties.

Aziz is currently in prison and in poor health. He has been convicted for his role in the 1992 execution of more than three dozen merchants found guilty of profiteering and for his role in the forced displacement of Kurds in northern Iraq.

Aziz has 30 days to appeal. His Jordan-based lawyer told The Associated Press they were consulting about their next moves.

Aziz, who spoke English fluently, was often the face of Saddam's regime in the 1990s and before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he surrendered to U.S. forces.

In 1998, Aziz traveled to the Vatican and met with Pope John Paul II. Aziz told Rome reporters he gave the pope a letter from Saddam asking the Vatican's help in lifting the U.N.-imposed sanctions on Iraq.

Aziz met with the pope again in 2003, as the Vatican engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity to try to prevent the U.S.-led invasion.

During that same visit to Italy, Aziz was invited by the Franciscan friars in Assisi, to pray at St. Francis' tomb. Many Italians complained that the Franciscans were being used by a man who since 1979 had been the No. 2 official of a regime guilty of serious human rights abuses.

In June 1992, when Iraqi officials refused to renew an agreement that would allow Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity to remain in Baghdad, Chaldean Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid appealed to Aziz, and the nuns were allowed to stay.

As usual, the liberal media need to pull Kung out of mothballs whenever the Pope is experiencing some success with his messages. I think the key comment in the article is what I've underlined.


The 'straight arrow' theologian and the pope

Hans Küng has always held to his progressive theological views. He believes that the present crisis in the church shows that he was right. The whole Roman system is in question, he maintains, though neither the Vatican nor the majority of the bishops yet realize it.

by John Wilkins
National Catholic Reporter
Nov. 12, 2010

TÜBINGEN, GERMANY -- Hans Küng has always held to his progressive theological views. He believes that the present crisis in the church shows that he was right. The whole Roman system is in question, he maintains, though neither the Vatican nor the majority of the bishops yet realize it.

We are sitting in the arbor at the end of the veranda of his house above Tübingen, looking out at the gorgeous view across the Swabian hills. He muses, “My critics said, ‘He always repeats the same thing.’ But we have the greatest crisis since the Reformation. What alternative was there? We need to go on again in the line of the [Second Vatican Council].”

He sees only “pseudo-reforms,” such as the merging of parishes under one priest, that do not touch the centralization, absolutism and clericalism that for him are at the roots of the bishops’ cover-up of criminal acts of clerical sexual abuse. He is encouraged by big changes at the level of local Catholic communities, and a growing conviction at that level that more must come. But “the main problem is how we can change our absolutist leadership in a peaceful way. We cannot use the methods of the French Revolution.”

He wears a T-shirt with a zippered collar. The curls of his bouffant hair have settled a bit now that he is 82, a year younger than Pope Benedict XVI, who as Joseph Ratzinger was a colleague at Tübingen until frightened into leaving the progressives’ camp by the student revolts of 1968.

The two men had a “very similar” upbringing, Küng reflects. “We both came from traditional Catholic families in traditional Catholic regions. We had the same sort of schooling.” But Ratzinger “was from the beginning fixed on this tradition. When as pope he received me in his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo” -- they talked for four hours -- “he told me, ‘I have to keep the tradition.’ But by ‘the tradition’ he means the tradition he knows very well, which he thinks is the Catholic tradition.”

Like everyone else, he was impressed with the success of Benedict’s visit to Great Britain Sept. 16-19. “I was not surprised,” Küng said. “He is personally very charming.” He applauds Benedict’s outspoken comments on the sexual abuse crisis.

But Küng wants Benedict to go further. “I ask for a mea culpa from the pope himself. He should not, for example, ask the Irish bishops to carry all the blame, when he himself as Joseph Ratzinger at the [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] enjoined secrecy on the episcopate in his 2001 letter.” Küng thinks the difficulties afflicting the respected Cardinal Godfried Danneels in Belgium -- “whom I know very well and always sympathized with” -- are more proof that the fault lies in “the whole system.”

It is symptomatic, Küng thinks, that the pope, who is by nature a humble man, should have adopted “pomp and circumstance” since his election. Küng was particularly disconcerted when Benedict put on the liturgical vestments of Leo X, “who condemned Luther without knowing him or having any idea of the Reformation.” Küng tells me that he wrote to Benedict, “at the time when we were still exchanging views,” asking him why he was doing this. Did he get a reply? “No, when he lifted the excommunication of the four schismatic Lefebvrist bishops and fished in Anglican waters, I did not think there was any point in continuing.”

While researching for his 1980 book Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today, Küng read deeply in the philosophy of science. There he came across Thomas Kuhn’s theory of “paradigms” -- sets of controlling ideas that govern scientific opinion before giving way in a “paradigm shift” to a succeeding set of ideas that then becomes the norm. It struck him that there were close parallels -- as well as differences -- between scientific revolutions and epochal changes in Christianity, and he applies the paradigm theory to explain Benedict’s thinking.

“For me the first paradigm is the Judaeo-Christian one. He has no serious theological knowledge of it. The second paradigm, the Hellenistic one, is what interests him. For him the Enlightenment is the Greek enlightenment, when the biblical message meets Greek philosophy.” This second paradigm, he explains, then gives way to the third, the medieval Catholic paradigm that established itself in the 11th century with Gregory VII and culminated in the Renaissance.

Küng recalls how French theologian Yves Congar, who played a major part at Vatican II (1962-65), would tell him, “If you want to understand the Roman Catholic church today, look at the 11th century.” There one sees the break between West and East, the rise of “Roman absolutism” and “enforced clericalism -- including the law of celibacy.” Küng thinks that Benedict is still wedded to that paradigm. “He is an antimodernist in the deepest sense of the word.”

By contrast, Vatican II set itself to take account of the succeeding two paradigms of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Unless this aim of the council is understood and implemented, Küng warns, its work will be “falsified.” For an example, he points to the “absolutely impossible statement” by Ratzinger’s doctrinal congregation in 2000 that the churches that issued from the Reformation “are not real churches.”

But this subverts the council’s teaching, objects Küng, as stated in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, that “the unique church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic church” (the Latin is subsistit in). At the time, Küng recalls, he wrote to the Belgian secretary of the theological commission, Msgr. Gérard Philips, to ask why they had said “subsists in,” rather than “is” as the preliminary text for the council had had it. The reply he received was that “we wanted to keep the matter open.”

Küng relives the promise those days held. “The great majority of the bishops and theologians were expecting that after the council all this would be settled anyway. We were on the right track, we thought, and we shall go on.”

Küng’s ideal pope is always John XXIII, who launched the council. Constantly in his writings Küng pleads for a papacy of pastoral service, like that of John, empowering the bishops, rather than one based on jurisdiction. “I am certainly not in favor of a straw man in Rome. But a pastoral authority is more powerful than just a jurisdictional authority.” In many ways, he believes, John had more authority than his predecessor, Pius XII. “In an audience in the Greek College in Rome, Pope John said, ‘I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible.’ That was his way, not making great historical arguments, but proceeding by his natural Christian feeling of what is authentically Christian and what is not.”

Küng said he is still devastated by the withdrawal in December 1979 of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. When I ask him about his regrets as he looks back on a long and eventful life, his reply surprises me. He singles out his decision to go skiing that Christmastide, only for the bad news to be telephoned to him while he was on top of a mountain. It is not that it would have made any difference if he had not gone, but that his decision to do so seems to him to throw into relief his misjudgment. “I was under the illusion that the Vatican would follow their own statutes. I thought they would not withdraw my license without going through the whole procedure. Everything was blocked because they did not want to give me the files. I thought they would not dare.”

He deals with those events in the second volume of his memoirs, where it is clear that he came close to a breakdown. “Yes,” he admits, “no doubt about that. It was a very serious case. You can come to a situation where you are entirely isolated. You feel despair. I would be marginalized in the university, without students anymore, which had been my life.”

He was upheld, however, by “the deep Christian conviction that I was basically right,” and the university created a special ecumenical chair for him. In the years that followed, he was able to engage with world religions and all people of goodwill, bending his efforts to working out a global ethic on which all could agree.

He shows me a new paperback booklet hot from the press in German and English, titled Manifesto for a Global Economic Ethic. It advocates principles for economic activity that “can be endorsed by all men and women with ethical convictions, whether these be religiously grounded or not.”

He is pleased that the first print run of his new book, What I Believe, was 60,000 copies. “That shows that theology is not over and done with, if it is presented in the right way.” The book attempts to appeal to its readers, whether they have a belief or not, on common ground of experience and reflection. Küng hopes it will help them to go beyond the empirical world. “When someone says, ‘I am not a materialist, I think there is a spiritual reality,’ I am already happy, for that is a grace.” But “it’s ultimately a great mystery,” he tells me. “We shall see. To meet God face-to-face is not given here.”

I have the same experience when meeting him this time that I have had before: I find that he has opened avenues for me. But I am aware that there is only room in the church for one pope. Cartoonists have sometimes depicted Küng wearing the papal tiara. He wears a wry expression when I remind him of the apocryphal story of the deadlocked papal conclave where the cardinals decide that perhaps Küng may be the candidate they seek. They go to see him. Would he be interested in running for the job? But Küng remembers that he has criticized the dogma of papal infallibility. Sadly, he has to turn down their invitation to step into the pope’s shoes, because if he did, “I would no longer be infallible.”

Who is Hans Küng? After dinner with him during Vatican II, Congar wrote in his journal: “Küng goes straight ahead like an arrow. He is a demanding, revolutionary type, rather impatient.” Congar added: “We need such people.”

The only thing I can say to that is:

ACH DU GROSSER GOTT!!!!

Can't sombody simply put a sock into that pompous, arrogant, self-loving, kumba-yah-ing, stuck in the sixties old twerp??!!

HE DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!!!



(sorry for the rant - it's the mild version of what I originally had in mind)

BTW: I love where you've posted this... not necessarily Church related - how true!!

Ha, ha!

I really like Cardinal Foley. He worked many years for JPII and Benedict. He seems to be a very kind and humble man with a wonderful sense of humor. It is so sad to hear about his illness.


Cardinal Foley Comes Home

Ailing, he retires to Philadelphia and recalls his long career at the Vatican and his work in journalism.

BY CHRISTIE L. CHICOINE
(CNS)
2/24/11 at 3:05 PM

DARBY, Pa. (CNS) — Cardinal John Foley, 75, a former editor of The Catholic Standard & Times in Philadelphia and former director of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications at the Vatican, is retiring and resigning from his post as grand master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem in Rome.

In September 2009, he was diagnosed with leukemia and anemia. “It’s been getting progressively worse, and I get weaker,” Cardinal Foley said. “I didn’t have the energy to perform my duties.”

He has returned to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia permanently, residing at Villa St. Joseph, a residence for retired, infirm and convalescent priests in Darby.

“I didn’t think it fair for the Church to have somebody in a position who couldn’t really fulfill the position,” he said of his post as grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher, a fraternal organization dedicated to supporting the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and responding to the needs of Catholics in the Holy Land. The cardinal said he felt privileged by his association with the organization.

He was appointed to the position in June 2007, after having served as director of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications for 23 years.

The cardinal said he has also battled thrombosis (clotting of the blood) in his legs, particularly on long flights. He suffered such an affliction just recently, on his flight to Philadelphia from Rome.

Cardinal Foley submitted a letter of resignation to the Vatican’s Secretary of State Feb. 8, met with Pope Benedict XVI Feb. 10 and returned to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Feb. 12.

He said he is happy at Villa St. Joseph, which is near the hospital where he was born, Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, “and a mile from my hometown of Sharon Hill.”

In 1984, when he was named archbishop and president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in Rome, Archbishop Foley asked Cardinal John Krol, then the archbishop of Philadelphia, if he could one day retire in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia at Villa St. Joseph. Cardinal Krol said, “Yes, but don’t expect me to be there to welcome you,” Cardinal Foley recalled. Cardinal Krol died in 1996.

Being back in the Church of Philadelphia is a blessing in itself, according Cardinal Foley. “It’s good to come home. That’s what I consider it — coming home.”

Because a priest never truly retires, the cardinal continues to celebrate Mass daily at his residence and to pray for the needs of all Catholics, those of his beloved Philadelphia in particular.

“I certainly ask for the prayers of so many people in the archdiocese where I was privileged to serve so long — 22 years of my priesthood were spent here, and since 1984, 27 years in Rome. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I hope I’m able to take part in that with my classmates, if God spares me.”

He carries the cross of his illness with courage. “That’s part of life,” Cardinal Foley said. “We’re here to prepare for eternal life. Whatever God has in store for me, that’s what I’m here for. I’m grateful to God for what he’s given me.”

He concedes that his physical limitations prevent him from continuing the busy schedule to which he has become accustomed. “I’m afraid I can’t get out very much because I don’t have the strength to do public ceremonies,” he said.

But he has goals. Cardinal Foley hopes to attend the Catholic Press Association’s centennial celebration and convention June 22-24 in Pittsburgh. “It’s the 100th anniversary for them, and I’ve been involved in it for 50 years,” he said.

The fact that he retired in February, Catholic Press Month, is also significant.

John Patrick Foley’s journalism career began in the fifth grade when he and his friends produced a one-page newspaper that contained jokes, cartoons and local news.

He started writing radio plays about the lives of the saints in seventh grade. Not only were his plays aired, but at age 14 he was asked to be an announcer for Sunday morning programming on what was then WJMJ in Philadelphia.

He also appeared in a televised, weekly college debate program during his college years, and he later co-produced the 20-program TV series The Making of a Priest.

Between stints as assistant editor of The Catholic Standard & Times in the 1960s, he completed his graduate studies in philosophy in Rome, where he also worked as a news reporter. His beat included covering the Second Vatican Council from 1963 to 1965.

In 1970, he was appointed editor of The Catholic Standard & Times, a post he held until Pope John Paul II named him an archbishop and head of the Vatican’s social communications council in 1984.

There, he helped the media gain access in covering Vatican events and provided the English-language commentary for worldwide broadcasts of major papal ceremonies, including Christmas, Good Friday and Easter celebrations.

After 25 years of providing the English-language commentary for the Pope’s Christmas midnight Mass, he announced in November 2009 that he was ceasing that role. “I guess I’m truly the ghost of Christmas past now,” Cardinal Foley said at the time.

Under his leadership, the social communications council issued separate documents promoting ethical standards in advertising, in communications and on the Internet. Another council document denounced pornography.

When the Vatican started to investigate the possibility of going online, then-Archbishop Foley lobbied tirelessly for the Holy See to be given its own top-level domain.

“We were first told that we should be part of .it for Italy. I told them we were surrounded by ‘It’ — that, in another sense, we were ‘It’ — but we were not ‘It.’”

After refusing to settle for .it and .org, he succeeded in obtaining for the Vatican the top-level domain of .va.

He said, “For us, that is very important, because you can be sure that anything coming from .va is authentic ... material from the Vatican and the Holy See.”

Editor’s note: Correspondence for Cardinal Foley may be sent to him at: Villa St. Joseph, 1436 Lansdowne Ave., Darby, PA 19023

Fr. Corapi: Convicted Already?

BY PAT ARCHBOLD
National Catholic Register
Sunday, March 20, 2011

Father Corapi, the dynamic and well known evangelist, broke the news on his own website this weekend that he has been placed on ‘administrative leave’ following wide ranging accusations of misconduct by a former employee. Fr. Corapi is adamant that the accusations are baseless and he decries the de facto policy that now finds accused priests guilty until proven innocent so as to avoid further embarrassment as he puts it, “just in case.”


There seems to no longer be the need for a complaint to be deemed “credible” in order for Church authorities to pull the trigger on the Church’s procedure, which was in recent years crafted to respond to cases of the sexual abuse of minors. I am not accused of that, but it seems, once again, that they now don’t have to deem the complaint to be credible or not, and it is being applied broadly to respond to all complaints. I have been placed on “administrative leave” as the result of this.

I’ll certainly cooperate with the process, but personally believe that it is seriously flawed, and is tantamount to treating the priest as guilty “just in case”, then through the process determining if he is innocent. The resultant damage to the accused is immediate, irreparable, and serious, especially for someone like myself, since I am so well known. I am not alone in this assessment, as multiple canon lawyers and civil and criminal attorneys have stated publicly that the procedure does grave damage to the accused from the outset, regardless of rhetoric denying this, and has little regard for any form of meaningful due process.


I am certainly not in any position to judge the facts in this particular case, but I must believe Fr. Corapi is innocent until proven otherwise. Beyond that, all I have is my gut feeling and my hope, both of which tend toward innocence. Time will tell. I’ve been wrong before.

But beyond the particulars of his own case, Fr. Corapi takes issue with the process, a process which seemingly holds the accused guilty until proven innocent. The truth is that someone of the prominence of Fr. Corapi may never recover his reputation, even though he be as pure as the driven snow.

It would seem that the destruction of reputations, even of the innocent, is the inevitable consequence of a zero-tolerance policy administered by those seeking to avoid embarrassment. In the past, accusations would be ignored to avoid embarrassment destroying lives. The flip side is that acting on any and all such accusations without meaningful due process will destroy lives too.

This topic hits home for me. As someone who was once accused of all kinds of baseless and crazy things in a wrongful termination suit, I know how it feels to be falsely accused. It is frustrating, saddening, infuriating, and much more. But the one emotion I retain from that horrible experience is gratitude. My employer, also implicated in the suit, stuck by me and defended me until it was eventually dropped. Wrongfully accused priests no longer have this luxury.

A zero-tolerance policy without due process that de facto impugns the reputations of the accused is immoral. The Church has a duty to protect the innocent, even if the innocent is a priest. Of course, the Church has a moral duty to make sure that the scandal of abuse and coverup is never repeated, but it cannot willfully sacrifice the reputations of the innocent as indemnification. The end does not justify the means. I do not know that any of this applies to the Father Corpai case, but we have seen this happen in other cases too and it is wrong.

We all know the devil hates priests, but I bet he doesn’t hate this policy. If all one has to do to destroy the reputation of a good priest is accuse, knowing that the Church will do the rest, the priesthood doesn’t stand a chance.

In this particular case, I pray for the accuser as well as the accused. I remain hopeful that the truth will clear Father if all he says is true. Either way, the Church has to fix this process. We owe it to our priests.


************


Fr. Corapi placed on leave after misconduct accusation

By Marianne Medlin

Corpus Christi, Texas, Mar 21, 2011 / 05:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Popular speaker and author Fr. John Corapi has been placed on administrative leave by superiors within his religious order following recent allegations of misconduct.

Fr. Corapi said in a March 19 statement that a 3-page letter submitted by a former, unidentified female employee was entirely “false.” The letter claimed that the priest took part in sexual encounters with several adult women and engaged in habitual drug use.

Fr. Corapi – a member of Texas-based Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity – is an internationally-known speaker and author who has appeared regularly on Catholic television and radio programs.

He gained a widespread audience with his conversion story. After a prominent career as a wealthy businessman, his life spiraled out of control due to a cocaine addiction, eventually leading to him living on the streets. He later joined the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest.

On March 18, Fr. Gerry Sheehan, Regional Priest Servant for the society, issued a statement saying that Fr. Corapi had been placed “on administrative leave from priestly ministry, in accordance to the Code of Cannon Law of the Catholic Church.”

“We have an allegation that Father Corapi has behaved in a manner unbecoming of a priest and are duty-bound to conduct an investigation in this accusation.”

Fr. Sheehan said it was “important to keep in mind that this action in no way implies Fr. Corapi is guilty of the allegation.”

“It is equally important to know that, based on the information we have received thus far,” he added, “the claim of misconduct does not involve minors and does not arise to the (level) of criminal conduct.”

The broadcast of Fr. Corapi’s homilies and teachings is also being affected by the allegation. The Eternal Word Television Network issued a statement from its CEO Michael Warsaw on March 21. He said that the “troubling situation” will result in the suspension of the priest's radio and television shows until further notice.

“As a result of this evolving story EWTN has deemed it prudent to place Fr. John's TV and Radio programs 'on leave' as well, pending the resolution of this situation,” Warsaw said.

“We take this step reluctantly and hope for a speedy resolution,” he added, saying he joins “Fr. John in asking all our family to not only pray for him but for all who may be involved.”

The 63 year-old priest said that he was informed of the accusations, which were reportedly sent to numerous bishops by the former employee, on March 9.

“On Ash Wednesday I learned that a former employee sent a three-page letter to several bishops accusing me of everything from drug addiction to multiple sexual exploits with her and several other adult women,” he said.

Fr. Corapi – who has been an outspoken critic of bishops' zero-tolerance policy in the wake of sex abuse scandals involving minors within the Church – said that from his perspective, being placed on leave was an equally reactionary move.

“There seems to no longer be the need for a complaint to be deemed 'credible' in order for Church authorities to pull the trigger on the Church’s procedure,” he said on his website.

Although he is not being accused of misconduct related to minors, Fr. Corapi added that “it seems, once again, that they now don’t have to deem the complaint to be credible or not, and it is being applied broadly to respond to all complaints.”

“I’ll certainly cooperate with the process, but personally believe that it is seriously flawed, and is tantamount to treating the priest as guilty 'just in case,' then through the process determining if he is innocent.”

“The resultant damage to the accused is immediate, irreparable, and serious, especially for someone like myself, since I am so well known,” he said.

“I am not alone in this assessment, as multiple canon lawyers and civil and criminal attorneys have stated publicly that the procedure does grave damage to the accused from the outset, regardless of rhetoric denying this, and has little regard for any form of meaningful due process,” Fr. Corapi added.

“All of the allegations in the complaint are false, and I ask you to pray for all concerned,” he said.

The Diocese of Corpus Christi, where the Society of of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity's mother house is located, said that although the case is outside its jurisdiction – given that Fr. Corapi is not a priest of the diocese – making the assumption that he is guilty of the allegations “is definitely not in order.”

“Fr. Corapi has done many great things – he should be presumed innocent of these allegations until proven otherwise,” Marty Wynd, director of communications told CNA in a March 21 phone interview.

“There's so many great priests who've done great things,” he added. “We have to be very, very careful here, and not presume any kind of guilt.”

Fr. Sheehan noted that the situation will now be “investigated internally, and unless and until information suggests otherwise it will not be referred to civil authorities.”

“In the event that we learn of any occasion where the criminal civil law may have been breached we will immediately refer the matter to civil authorities,” he added.

Father Corapi's company says action against priest violates canon law

By Dennis Sadowski
Catholic News Service
March 28, 2011

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A representative of the media company owned by Father John Corapi challenged the action to place the popular speaker on administrative leave from priestly ministry, saying that it was illicit under "several points of canon law."

Bobbi Ruffatto, vice president of operations at Santa Cruz Media, Inc., in Kalispell, Mont., charged in a posting on Father Corapi's Facebook page March 25 that Bishop William M. Mulvey of Corpus Christi, Texas, acted improperly, according to canon lawyers consulted by the company.

The statement offered no specific citations of canon law.

However, Marty Wind, director of communications for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, disputed Ruffatto's claim that Bishop Mulvey placed Father Corapi on leave. He said the action was taken by officials of the priest's order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity in Robstown, Texas.

"We have been clear from the beginning that the bishop of Corpus Christi was notified by the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity that the administrative leave was imposed by the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, not the bishop of the diocese," Wind told Catholic News Service March 25.

Father Corapi was placed on administrative leave following an accusation of misconduct by a former Santa Cruz Media employee.

The priest denied any wrongdoing in a statement on his website March 18. He gave little information about the accusation except to say a former employee had "sent a three-page letter to several bishops accusing me of everything from drug addiction to multiple sexual exploits with her and several adult women."

Father Gerard Sheehan, regional priest servant for the society, said March 28 he had not yet seen Ruffatto's posting and that no formal discussion within the order about it had occurred.

The investigation into the former Santa Fe Media employee's claim has yet to begin, Father Sheehan added, because the two priests who will conduct the probe had not yet been named. Bishop Mulvey instructed the religious community to ask two priests who are not diocesan clergy and who are not members of the order to investigate the allegations.

Father Sheehan said he was waiting for clarification from the diocese before choosing the priest investigators.

Wind said that although Father Corapi was placed on leave, "it's been the position of the Diocese of Corpus Christi from the outset that the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise is of the highest importance."

Calls and emails from Catholic News Service to Santa Cruz Media requesting comment from Father Corapi and Ruffatto were not returned.

Online records with the Montana secretary of state list John Corapi as the registered agent for the company. A company with the same name also is registered in Nevada and online records in the secretary of state's office there indicated John A. Corapi holds the office of president, treasurer, secretary and director.

Ruffatto's six-paragraph statement referenced the U.S. bishops' zero-tolerance policy as outlined by the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" and called for it to be changed "because of false accusations like this."

Father Corapi has been an outspoken critic of the charter in interviews and during his public presentations.

"There is no evidence at this time that Father Corapi did anything wrong, only the unsubstantiated rant of a former employee, who, after losing her job with this office, physically assaulted me and another employee and promised to destroy Father Corapi," Ruffatto said.

"We all continue to pray for this person and we ask you to do the same," the Santa Cruz executive added.

Ruffatto said the company would continue selling the books, DVDs, and other video and audio recordings of its owner as the investigation unfolds. Ruffatto said the purchases of customers would allow Father Corapi to continue his work as well as pay for legal expenses to fight the allegation.

"We are a secular corporation and not affiliated with the Catholic Church in any way," the company official said. "As such, we are not under the jurisdiction of any bishop or other official in the Catholic Church, although we have the utmost respect for church authority."

After the 63-year-old priest was placed on leave, EWTN suspended broadcasts of his widely viewed television program. In an unsigned statement on its website, the Catholic broadcast network said officials took the step "with much prayer and careful discernment."

"In EWTN's 30 years of existence the network has never knowingly aired programming featuring any priest whose priestly faculties have been suspended," the statement said. "The network has always responded consistently and immediately in such situations by removing such programs from the air. We are obliged to do so in obedience to the discipline of the church."

Christopher Hitchens has mellowed, but his idea of Christianity is still grossly distorted

He suspects the scientist who pioneered his cancer treatment is praying for him, and doesn’t mind

By FRANCIS PHILLIPS
Catholic Herald
Monday, 28 March 2011

If this sounds like a question from the radio programme Round Britain Quiz, I’m sorry. It has just struck me so I will formulate it anyway: what do Pope Benedict, the scientist Francis Collins and Christopher Hitchens have in common? Answer: His Holiness mentions Collins on page 193 of his book Jesus of Nazareth (that’s as far as I’ve got; it’s very dense so I’m having to read it slowly); Collins is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; and it is his research which has pioneered the experimental treatment that Hitchens is receiving for his throat cancer. Interestingly, Hitchens, as well as naturally hoping that this treatment will efficiently target the site of his tumour, has become good friends with Collins and has publicly debated religion with him.

The Holy Father, as is generally known, is a Catholic; Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian, and author of The Language of God: A Scientist presents Evidence for Belief; and Hitchens, in case you didn’t know it, is a devout atheist. “Devout” is probably the wrong word but “keen” or “committed” don’t quite convey his evangelical brand of atheism. Some Christians hope that if the experiment, involving Hitchens’s DNA, is effective and he is cured, he will undergo a change of heart. But conversion doesn’t work so straightforwardly; you have to be open to grace at some level and, judging from his public pronouncements, Hitchens has slammed this particular door shut. Yet who am I to judge him? As Carson McCullers once wrote, the heart is a lonely hunter.

What is obvious, though, is that in Hitchens’s case, it is not a question of Christianity having been tried and found wanting: it has simply never been tried – or understood. In an interview with Mick Brown in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph magazine he says he has never yearned for faith, adding: “There isn’t the evidence and I don’t see why anyone would want it to be true. A permanent, invigilated, regulated dictatorship which you are told is for your own good – I can’t think of anything worse.” If that is not the most grotesque distortion of Christianity in short compass, I don’t know what is.

And why does Pope Benedict mention Francis Collins? Because “in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognise the language of God”. It was this “language” that converted Collins himself (although it has not yet converted the scientist Richard Dawkins). The Pope tells us why: “But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself – who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong – this… cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness towards ‘truth’ itself – towards the question of our real identity and purpose.”

It hardly needs to be pointed out how this applies to Hitchens’s mindset. Still, he has mellowed. He suspects that Collins is praying for him and doesn’t mind, although he thinks it a waste of time. I have blogged before about Hitchens and prayer. He still needs it.

Fr. Corapi announces he's leaving the priesthood

by Marianne Medlin

Corpus Christi, Texas, Jun 18, 2011 / 01:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of being suspended over what he claims are unproven allegations, popular speaker Fr. John Corapi announced that after 20 years in ministry, he's leaving the Catholic priesthood.

“I am not going to be involved in public ministry as a priest any longer,” he said in an online post. “There are certain persons in authority in the Church that want me gone, and I shall be gone.”

In a June 17 post on a website with the title of his new ministry “Black Sheep Dog,” and a related YouTube video clip, Fr. Corapi outlined his reasons for leaving.

He said that he feels unjustly accused, that the process of clearing his name has been too sluggish and that there are authorities in the Church who are intentionally trying to oust him.

The news comes as Fr. Corapi had been placed on administrative leave since March by superiors within his religious order following allegations of misconduct.

Fr. Corapi claimed in a March 19 statement that 3-page letter submitted by a former, unidentified female employee was entirely “false.” The letter claimed that the priest took part in sexual encounters with several adult women and engaged in habitual drug use.

A previous member of Texas-based Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, Fr. Corapi is an internationally-known speaker and author who has appeared regularly on Catholic television and radio programs.

He gained a widespread audience with his conversion story. After a prominent career as a wealthy businessman, his life spiraled out of control due to a cocaine addiction, eventually leading to him living on the streets. He later came back to the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest.

On March 18, Fr. Gerry Sheehan, Regional Priest Servant for the society, issued a statement defending the suspension, saying that he and other authorities were “duty-bound to conduct an investigation in this accusation.”

Fr. Corapi said in his online post Friday that he's “been guilty of many things in the course of my life, and could easily and justifiably be considered unfit to engage in public ministry as a priest.”

However, referring to the woman in question, he said that the “present complaint that you have heard about is, as far as I know, from the one person that I can honestly say I did more to help and support than any human being in my entire life.”

“I forgive her and hope only good things for her. I am not going to get into a back and forth or argument with the Church or anyone else about this matter.”

He said that even though he loves the Catholic Church, the process used following the allegations “is inherently and fatally flawed, but the bishops have the power, apparently, to operate anyway they see fit.”

“I cannot give a lengthy explanation of what has transpired, but I can tell you that the most likely outcome is that they leave me suspended indefinitely and just let me fade away.”

“My canon lawyer and my civil lawyers have concluded that I cannot receive a fair and just hearing under the Church’s present process,” he said. “The case may be on hold indefinitely, but my life cannot be.”

Fr. Corapi said that he'll move forward by continuing with ministry within the Church and also outside of it.

“I shall continue, black sheep that I am, to speak; and sheep dog that I am, to guard the sheep – this time around not just in the Church, but also in the entire world.”

“Under the name 'The Black Sheep Dog,' I shall be with you through radio broadcasts and writing. My autobiography, 'The Black Sheep Dog,' is almost ready for publication.”

“My topics will be broader than in the past, and my audience likewise is apt to be broader,” he added. “I’ll do what I can under the circumstances.”


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Fr. Corapi Has Lost It

by Jimmy Akin
National Catholic Register
Saturday, June 18, 2011

Fr. John Corapi has published a statement—also available in video form—in which he has announced that he is leaving active ministry as a priest.

He’s right.

He is. And he has.

Unless something extraordinarily improbable occurs, he will never again function as a Catholic priest.

And it’s his fault.

I do not know whether he is guilty of the sexual misconduct of which he is apparently accused. I have no way of determining that.

Frankly, from what is known of the situation, the entire thing sounds weird, and it did from the beginning. Both what was known about the accuser’s actions sounded weird (although that could have been due to imperfect representation of the facts) and also Fr. Corapi’s public reaction was weird. This made if hard to judge where potential misdoing was likely to lie. It could have been with either party—or both.

But at this point it doesn’t really matter which one was at fault or whether both were, because Fr. Corapi—who is likely soon to be laicized whether he applies for this or not—has taken it upon himself to end the matter by publicly abandoning his priesthood.

If his statement is any guide, this was not forced upon him. This was something he freely chose.

In fact, it may have chosen it some time ago, since in his statement he said that his autobiography, titled “The Black SheepDog.” This may be a work that he has been producing since the sexual allegations first emerged against him, and that may signal that he has been planning this current move—or aspects of it—for some time.

The name of the book is also worthy of attention: “The Black SheepDog.” This is a portmanteau of “the black sheep” and “sheep dog.”

“Black sheep” is obviously a common English idiom for a member of a group (typically a family) who either has fallen from grace or who is regarded by members of the group as having fallen from grace. That fits Fr. Corapi’s status given the sexual misconduct allegations against him.

What’s startling is that he would identify with this label and make it his own. It’s embracing an “on the run” identity that signals separation from an disobedience to the ecclesiastical authorities.

After all, not every person accused of sexual misconduct would embrace such a label. Many would say, “I’m innocent! I’m a white sheep, and I look forward to vindicating myself against the charges that have been falsely lodged with regard to me!”

So the embrace of the “black sheep” label is itself disturbing . . . and unusual . . . a symbol of a “rebel” or “renegade” mindset.

Then there’s the “sheep dog” part. And this is really disturbing. Even more so than the former.

The job of a sheep dog, of course, is to herd sheep—to keep them from (get this) straying from the fold and to make them go where the shepherd wants and keep them safe from danger.

Those are obviously pastoral functions—in the literal sense. A pastor (Latin, “shepherd”) employs sheep dogs to help him in his job protecting and guiding the sheep and maintaining the integrity of the flock.

By embracing the image of a sheep dog, Fr. Corapi thus announces his intention—despite his public abandonment of the priesthood—to continue in some form of pastoral ministry.
It may not be priestly—he may not be celebrating the sacraments—but he still sees himself as involved in pastoral work.

But given the snarling tone in which he writes about his relationship with bishops, including this statement—

Please don’t bother the bishop or complain because it will do no good and it wastes valuable time and energy, both his and yours.

—it is hard to read this other than as a statement that Fr. Corapi plans to ignore ecclesiastical supervision of any kind and continue his pastoral, “sheep dog” ministry with respect to the sheep of Christ’s flock, even if the duly-appointed shepherds of that flock do not wish him trying to manage their flocks.

The picture painted by his statement is thus of a sheep dog out of control—one who has turned on the shepherds of the flock and decided that he, not the shepherds, knows best for them and is willing to defy them to their faces.

And then there’s just the weird aspect of the naming thing.

“The Black SheepDog”?

Really?

Sounds like a superhero.

And not a good one.

Sheeps and dogs are rather . . . um . . . comical? in the superhero department.

So no points on that front.

Whatever superhero-esque name he may choose for himself, Fr. Corapi has forever ruined any chances he had of functioning as a Catholic priest.

He could have done the sensible thing and waited.

If he faced setbacks, he could have taken the avenues of canonical recourse open to him, which included multiple potential appeals to Rome.

I am not in any way unsympathetic to falsely accused priests or priests who feel that the need to be more stringent safeguards against false accusations. In fact, if Fr. Corapi were innocent (as he may be) then he could have chosen to make himself a test case to get better safeguards enacted. (After all, that’s something only an innocently accused priest can do; a guilty priest cannot expect such since the truth against him has come out).

But Fr. Corapi—or “the Black SheepDog”—or whatever he wants to be called—chose not to stand firm in the face of what he claimed were false allegations.

Instead, he chose to defy authority and set up his own shop, claiming as a “sheep dog” to protect the flock whose leaders he is defying.

Unless something very improbable happens, he has thus abandoned his priesthood in a way that will from here on out bar him from serving as a Catholic priest.

By the way, I had no idea what the result of the investigation would be prior to this announcement, but in view of it, and in view of what was previously known, I am in no way surprised.

I wish I had been, but I’m not.

Dang.

I wish things had gone better.

Fr. Corapi has “lost it.”

And by “it” I mean any likely chance of working as a priest again.

It doesn’t matter if the charges against him were false. By refusing to cooperate with the Church’s process, and by announcing his intention to speak in defiance of that authority, he has rejected any chance of resolving the charges against him on the grounds that he is innocent.

This is so sad. We should all pray.


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Father Corapi’s Bombshell

The popular speaker announces plans to leave the priesthood amid an investigation into allegations of misconduct, and his religious superior breaks his silence on the investigation. A Register news analysis.

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND
National Catholic Register
06/19/2011

Father John Corapi, the popular Catholic evangelist, announced on June 17 that he would leave the priesthood and begin a new endeavor outside Church control — called “Black Sheep Dog” — focused on a “broader” message and a global audience.

Three months have passed since Father Corapi, a priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), was removed from public ministry by his order while it investigated allegations of misconduct leveled by one of his former employees.

Posted on YouTube and on the website of Santa Cruz Media, the company led by Father Corapi that distributes his bestselling catechetical materials, the announcement shocked his many supporters, some of whom had vented their anger at the priest’s religious superiors and at EWTN and other media outlets, which suspended his programs after the allegations against him became public. The Register is a service of EWTN.

Raising more questions than it answered, the message did not state the precise reason why Father Corapi chose to resign from the priesthood, rather than waiting for the outcome of SOLT’s investigation of the alleged misconduct.

However, Father Gerard Sheehan, regional priest-servant of SOLT and Father Corapi’s religious superior in the U.S., confirmed June 19 that the order’s investigation faced complications created by a civil suit filed by Father Corapi against the former employee who had accused him of sexual misconduct.

“When she left the company, she signed a contract that she would not reveal anything that happened to her while she was at Santa Cruz Media. Father Corapi paid her for this. Father was suing her for a breach of contract,” said Father Sheehan, though he did not specify why Father Corapi had initiated the non-disclosure agreement.

The civil suit against the former employee created a problem for SOLT investigators.

“In canon law, there can’t be any pressure on witnesses; they have to be completely free to speak. The investigation was compromised because of the pressure on the witnesses.

There were other witnesses that also had signed non-disclosure agreements,” said Father Sheehan.

“The canon lawyers were in a difficult situation, and Father does have his civil rights and he decided to follow his legal counsel, which he had a right to do,” he said. “We tried to continue the investigation without speaking to the principal witnesses.”

The investigation was halted after Father Corapi “sent us a letter resigning from active ministry and religious life. I have written him a letter asking him to confirm that decision. If so, we will help him with this process of leaving religious life,” said Father Sheehan.

He expressed disappointment that Father Corapi chose not to remain in SOLT and to refuse the order’s invitation for him to live in community, leaving his Montana home. Father Sheehan said he had tried to arrange a meeting with Father Corapi before any final decision was announced, but had not heard back from him. Father Sheehan said that SOLT would issue a statement shortly.

“We wanted him to come back to the community, and that would have meant leaving everything he has. It would have been a drastic change for him,” Father Sheehan said. “We will continue to move pastorally and charitably, taking steps to protect his good name.”

Father Corapi’s YouTube message did not address his relationship with SOLT religious authorities. Though his statement reads “I love the Catholic Church and accept what has transpired,” it offered a conflicted message on the respect due the Catholic hierarchy.

On the one hand, Father Corapi affirmed the right of the bishops to implement new guidelines for addressing clerical misconduct. Yet, he persistently attacked the logic and integrity of those guidelines, and sharply criticized Bishop William Mulvey of Corpus Christi, Texas, for taking action to forcibly remove him from active ministry.

The YouTube announcement and a text version of his statement began with an acknowledgement that the upcoming Trinity Sunday, June 19, 2011, marked his “20th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood in the Catholic Church. For 20 years I was called ‘father.’”

Expressing his gratitude for ongoing expressions of support, the priest then stated: “All things change, only God stays the same, so I have to tell you about a major change in my life. I am not going to be involved in public ministry as a priest any longer. There are certain persons in authority in the Church that want me gone, and I shall be gone.”

Echoing themes repeated in recent Santa Cruz Media posts that asserted his innocence, questioned the motives of his accuser, and criticized recent Church policies that suspended priests from active ministry following allegations of misconduct, he presented himself as one of many priests victimized by disciplinary practices established after the 2002 clergy abuse crisis.

“For 20 years I did my best to guard and feed the sheep. Now, based on a totally unsubstantiated, undocumented allegation from a demonstrably troubled person I was thrown out like yesterday’s garbage,” he stated.

He provided few substantive details regarding his new Black Sheep Dog initiative, but sketched out an ambitious mission: “I shall continue, black sheep that I am, to speak; and sheep dog that I am, to guard the sheep — this time around not just in the Church, but also in the entire world,” he stated.

He confirmed plans to produce radio programs and publish books, including an autobiography Black Sheep Dog. His mention of the book’s imminent release suggested that his bombshell announcement had been planned for some time.

The announcement will likely prompt scrutiny of Father Corapi’s ties to the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), the apostolic religious order he joined twenty years ago, and raise questions about whether SOLT superiors should have allowed him to live and work apart from his religious community.

In a previous interview with the Register, published after Father Corapi’s suspension, Father Sheehan implicitly acknowledged that the accused priest was not living in conformity with SOLT’s constitution, approved in 1994.

“The founder’s arrangement with Father Corapi was established before that time, when Father Flanagan believed that every mission should take care of its own needs,” noted Father Sheehan at that time. “Now, according to our constitution, a different way of life has been established for members. All the money we make is turned over to the society, which gives us an allowance.”

During that interview, Father Sheehan confirmed that SOLT had “begun to address the issues of members who joined the society before the new constitution. The society is moving to a more organized structural phase of its existence, with all the Church discipline that entails.” The implication of his remarks was that Father Corapi had not accommodated the discipline imposed by the new constitution.

Father Corapi’s status in the Diocese of Helena, the location of his home, also raised questions about his legal ability to exercise his ministerial priesthood. In the wake of his suspension, the chancellor of the Diocese of Helena, Father John Robertson, stated that “Father Corapi has a personal residence in Kalispell, Mont. He does not hold priestly faculties in the Diocese of Helena.”

Father Corapi’s YouTube statement did not address questions raised by these recent public disclosures. In the message, his ire was reserved for the Bishop of Corpus Christi.

“I did not start this process, the Bishop of Corpus Christi, Texas ordered my superiors, against their will and better judgment, to do it. He in fact threatened to release a reprehensible and libelous letter to all of the bishops if they did not suspend me. He has a perfect right to do so, and I defend that right. Bishops aren’t bound by civil laws and procedures in internal Church matters.”

His remarks raised questions about the role of the bishop of Corpus Christi in the decision to place him on administrative leave. The motherhouse of SOLT is based in that diocese. In the wake of his suspension, Marty Wind, a diocesan spokesman said that his case was outside the jurisdiction of the diocese and that SOLT authorities had initiated the action to temporarily remove him from active ministry.

In his YouTube post, Father Corapi characterized the process that led to his suspension as “inherently and fatally flawed.” He added that “The case may be on hold indefinitely, but my life cannot be,” he said, implying that his decision to leave the priesthood and establish “Black Sheep Dog” was essentially forced on him.

The painful decision was guided by legal counsel, he said: “My canon lawyer and my civil lawyers have concluded that I cannot receive a fair and just hearing under the Church’s present process. The Church will conclude that I am not cooperating with the process because I refuse to give up all of my civil and human rights in order to hold harmless anyone who chooses to say defamatory and actionable things against me with no downside to them.”

Attempts to reach Father Corapi for comment were unsuccessful.

He used his statement of resignation as a forum for airing a range of objections regarding the U.S. bishops’ “zero tolerance” policy — though not all the concerns he outlined seemed directly applicable to his particular case.

Curiously, his statement did not explain why his case could not be resolved with the outcome of an investigation initiated by his religious superiors, and that suggested there may be other issues complicating a timely conclusion.

As with most of the recent posts regarding the allegations and suspension on his site and by Santa Cruz Media, this statement included a marketing pitch for his fans, who were encouraged to visit the Black Sheep Dog website: “I hope you stay with us and follow us into our new domain and name of ‘The Black Sheep Dog.’ Through writing and broadcasting we hope to continue to dispense truth and hope to a world so much in need of it.”

In his closing statement — where he signed off as “John Corapi (once called “father,” now ‘The Black Sheep Dog’),” he acknowledged that some supporters might turn their backs on him. But given the strong encouragement he received after his initial suspension, it is difficult to predict whether he will hold on to his many supporters — and even make new ones in his forthcoming “global” ministry outside Church supervision, Black Sheep Dog.

Rome to consider possible miracle of ‘Rosary Priest’

By Kevin J. Jones

Albany, N.Y., Jun 25, 2011 / 06:55 am (CNA).- A possible miraculous cure attributed to Catholic media pioneer Fr. Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., could advance the beatification cause of the “Rosary Priest” known for his motto “The family that prays together, stays together.”

A tribunal based in the Diocese of Albany has investigated the alleged miracle and will forward its findings to Rome on June 28.

The details of the possible miracle cannot be shared at this point, explained Fr. John Phalen, C.S.C., president of Holy Cross Family Ministries. However, he did report that the case involves a man in his sixties who was admitted to the hospital with “life-threatening, multiple organ failure.”

“His family prayed to Father Peyton and they strongly felt that he was healed through intercessory prayer. The medical community has offered information to support this belief,” Fr. Phalen said.

The man’s family is from the Albany area and was “very well aware” of the famous local priest, said Susan Wallace, director of external relations at Holy Cross Family Ministries.

“We all love Fr. Peyton dearly. There are many people who tell me every day ‘Oh he’s a saint, he doesn’t need all that paperwork,” she told CNA on June 23.

“But it is important for us to move this forward. Any time we make any progress, we celebrate. We’re very, very pleased. We’re excited to be moving forward and meeting these milestones.”

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany and Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, the postulator of Fr. Peyton’s cause, asked the tribunal to conduct a thorough review of all aspects of the possible miracle. The tribunal findings will be forwarded to the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints in Rome.

Bishop Hubbard will celebrate a closing liturgy for the tribunal at Albany’s St. Vincent de Paul Church at noon on June 28.

Fr. Phalen said Holy Cross Family Ministries, which Fr. Peyton founded, hears frequently from people around the world who believe they were healed by the priest’s intercession.

“Many others simply share stories of being touched by his holiness,” Fr. Phalen explained. “While they may already consider him a saint, we are all pleased to see progress in his cause.”

Wallace said Fr. Peyton’s entire ministry was rooted in the Family Rosary prayed in his home growing up.

“He knew how strong that made his family,” she said, deeming his motto about family prayer to be “still relevant and powerful.”

“There’s a great need for families to come together and pray,” she added.

Fr. Peyton emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1928 at the age of 19. Ordained to the priesthood in 1941, he founded the Family Rosary apostolate in Albany, New York the following year. He conducted Rosary crusades in 40 countries and drew 28 million attendees.

In 1947 he created Family Theater Productions, which has produced about 600 radio and television programs featuring hundreds of actors and celebrities. More than 10,000 of these programs have been broadcast.

The priest died in 1992 and was declared a Servant of God in 2001.

Holy Cross Family Ministries runs a website about Fr. Peyton and his cause for beatification at www.fatherpeyton.org.

Cardinal Scola to head Milan Archdiocese

by John Thavis
CNS
June 28, 2011

VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Angelo Scola was named this morning as the new head of the Archdiocese of Milan, Italy’s largest diocese.

The 69-year-old cardinal, a native of Milan, has been patriarch of Venice since 2002, where he made a reputation as a very active pastor and developed a type of Catholic think-tank on Middle Eastern issues.

During the last conclave, Cardinal Scola’s name was on the short list of papabili. Today’s appointment will no doubt keep him in the mix when that topic comes up again.

In 2004, I visited Venice several times to do an in-depth profile on Cardinal Scola. I found him to be as energetic as advertised on a pastoral level, and certainly one of Italy’s more intellectual church leaders. In Milan, an archdiocese of nearly 5 million Catholics, he’ll face a whole new set of challenges.


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A papal front-runner may get a boost in Milan

by John Allen
National Catholic Reporter
Jun. 24, 2011

Editor's Note: Cardinal Angelo Scola was named this morning as the new head of the Archdiocese of Milan, Italy's largest diocese. Following is a look at who Scola is and what his appointment to Milan might mean. The article was written by NCR senior correspondent John L. Allen, Jr., for the June 24 print issue of National Catholic Reporter, before Scola's appointment was announced.

ANALYSIS

Sometimes a job is important not only for what its occupant does, but what it symbolizes. In the Catholic church there’s no better example than the archbishop of Milan, Italy, whose incumbent is almost automatically considered tanto papabile, i.e., a leading candidate to become the next pope.

In the 20th century, two archbishops of Milan went on to the papacy, Pius XI and Paul VI, while two others, Cardinals Carlo Maria Martini and Dionigi Tettamanzi, spent more or less their entire tenures surrounded by speculation over their future prospects.

That background makes the current countdown toward Pope Benedict XVI’s choice for who will take over from Tettamanzi, which is expected soon, a matter of interest across the entire Catholic world. According to veteran Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli, the top candidate is an already familiar face: Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, Italy.

If Scola does indeed go to Milan, he will likely be touted in the media as a sort of crown prince of Catholicism -- the lead item in every story or broadcast about the next conclave, from now until whenever it occurs.

Even without the cachet of the papal sweepstakes, church-watchers have long regarded the 69-year-old Scola as an intriguing figure. He’s very much in sync theologically with the current pontificate, but with a more extroverted personality, a deeply global perspective, and somewhat greater optimism about the church’s prospects in the here and now.

Born in 1941 in Malgrate, Italy, a small town in the Lombardy region, Scola comes from a humble background -- his father was a truck driver, his mother a housewife. He attended the University of the Sacred Heart in Milan in the early 1960s, where he became a friend and disciple of an Italian priest named Msgr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the “Communion and Liberation” movement.

At the time, Italians saw Communion and Liberation as a conservative alternative both to the “Catholic Action” movement and to the broadly progressive ethos of the Milan archdiocese under Cardinals Giovanni Battista Montini (who became Paul VI) and Giovanni Colombo.

Scola later studied at the prestigious University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where his area of interest was theological anthropology. He was drawn to thinkers who had been part of the reform-minded majority at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), but who later developed reservations about the direction of the postconciliar church. He was especially influenced by Cardinal Henri de Lubac and Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, and later published book-length interviews with both theologians.

Scola became a cofounder of the Italian edition of Communio, the international theological journal founded as a conservative counterpoint to Concilium, the journal of the council’s progressive wing. From 1986 to 1991, Scola served as a consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was in charge. In 1995, he was named rector of the Lateran University in Rome.

In 1982 Scola was appointed to the faculty at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, created to defend Catholic teaching on issues such as divorce, artificial reproduction, cloning, homosexuality and abortion. During John Paul’s papacy, figures associated with the institute at The Catholic University of America in Washington served as architects of the struggle against what the late pope described as a “culture of death” in the secular West.

Benedict is himself a longtime admirer of both Giussani and Communion and Liberation; in 2005, shortly before his election to the papacy, he volunteered to lead Giussani’s funeral Mass. To illustrate the influence those ties afford Scola, he was the one who suggested that Benedict consider creating a Vatican department dedicated to “New Evangelization,” which the pontiff promptly did. The idea actually originated with Giussani.

In early May, Scola presided over Benedict’s brief visit to Venice, where the pontiff recalled the three patriarchs of Venice in the 20th century who went on to become popes: Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I. (Traditionally the archbishop of Venice carries the title of “Patriarch.”) Though Benedict didn’t connect the dots, the takeaway seemed unmistakable: It could happen again.

Given its history, Venice has always styled itself as a bridge between cultures, and Scola has embraced that legacy since taking over in January 2002. One signature cause is his “Oasis Foundation,” launched in 2004 to promote solidarity among Christians in the Middle East and dialogue with the Islamic world.

In a 2010 interview with NCR, Scola distinguished among three currents in Islam: the moderates, who he said are generally not representative of the Muslim “street”; the radicals, who are not open to dialogue; and “traditional Islam,” meaning the vast majority of observant Muslims generally not represented in official channels of conversation. One aim of Oasis, he said, is to engage traditional Islam.

As opposed to some European prelates, Scola is typically not inclined to handwringing about the “silent apostasy,” in the words of John Paul II, of the West. Instead, Scola tends to believe that Christianity still has culture-shaping capacity, if it finds the nerve to make its case effectively.

That profile has made Scola a point of reference both in the global church and in the Vatican. In 2005, for instance, he served as the relator, or chairman, for the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist.

To be sure, until an official announcement comes down, there’s no guarantee that Scola will wind up in Milan. According to Tornielli’s report, others in the running include Bishop Francesco Lambiasi of Rimini, Italy (where Communion and Liberation’s massive annual meeting takes place); Msgr. Aldo Giordano, the Vatican’s representative to the Council of Europe; and Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a respected former official of the Secretariat of State now serving as the pope’s ambassador in Venezuela.

Yet even if Scola stays put, he could still be a formidable contender heading into a conclave. Without knowing how Milan will shake out, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power already has Scola down as a 6-1 favorite to be the next pope.

No matter what his address over the next few years, therefore, Cardinal Angelo Scola is a prelate well worth tracking.

Wait till the mainstream media seize on this. This is such a shame.


Order accuses Father Corapi of sexual, financial wrongdoing, falsehoods

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service
July 5, 2011

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Father John A. Corapi was involved in "years of cohabitation" with a former prostitute, repeated abuse of alcohol and drugs and "serious violation" of his promise of poverty, according to a fact-finding team appointed by his religious order.

Father Corapi, who recently announced he would leave the priesthood because he could not get a "fair hearing" on misconduct allegations against him, has been ordered by the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity to return to live at the order's regional headquarters in Robstown, Texas, and to dismiss a lawsuit against the woman whose accusations prompted the investigation.

"Catholics should understand that (the order) does not consider Father John Corapi as fit for ministry," said a July 5 news release from Father Gerard Sheehan, regional priest servant for the order, commonly known as SOLT.

Although Father Corapi's ministry "has inspired thousands of faithful Catholics," the news release said, he is "now misleading these individuals through his false statements and characterizations."

"It is for these Catholics that SOLT, by means of this announcement, seeks to set the record straight," it added.

There was no immediate response to the announcement from Father Corapi.

The order said its three-member fact-finding team had gathered information "from Father Corapi's emails, various witnesses and public sources" and had concluded that the priest:

-- "Did have sexual relations and years of cohabitation (in California and Montana) with a woman known to him, when the relationship began, as a prostitute."

-- "Repeatedly abused alcohol and drugs."

-- "Has recently engaged in sexting activity with one or more women in Montana."

-- "Holds legal title to over $1 million in real estate, numerous luxury vehicles, motorcycles, an ATV, a boat dock and several motor boats, which is a serious violation of his promise of poverty as a perpetually professed member of this society."

Although he did not name them, Father Sheehan said the fact-finding team was made up of a priest specializing in canon law, a psychiatrist and a lawyer, each of whom has a national reputation and "substantial experience in ecclesiastical processes related to priest disciplinary issues."

Two of the three were members of religious orders, and the third was a layperson. Two were men and one was a woman, he said.

As the team was carrying out its work, Father Corapi filed a civil suit against his principal accuser and then offered $100,000 for her silence, the news release said. Other key witnesses who "may have negotiated contracts ... that precluded them from speaking" with the team declined to answer its questions or provide documents, it said.

When the fact-finding team asked Father Corapi to dismiss the lawsuit and release individuals from their contractual obligations to remain silent, "he refused to do so and, through his canonical advocate, stated, 'It is not possible for Father Corapi to answer the commission's questions at this time,'" the news release added.

Father Corapi, 64, announced June 17 -- two days before the 20th anniversary of his priestly ordination -- in a YouTube video and blog posting that he would leave the priesthood.

"For 20 years I did my best to guard and feed the sheep," he said in the blog posting. "Now, based on a totally unsubstantiated, undocumented allegation from a demonstrably troubled person I was thrown out like yesterday's garbage. I accept that. Perhaps I deserve that."

Father Corapi had been highly visible for several years as a speaker and preacher, including a program on the Eternal Word Television Network. EWTN took his show off its schedule shortly after his suspension, saying it would not knowingly put on the air a priest whose faculties had been suspended.

The SOLT news release said Father Sheehan would not be available for further comment because of the order's general chapter July 5-23.

Hi, I heard that the Patriarch of Venice is going to be the Archbishop of Milan too.
Who will be his successor in Venice?

This is sad news and hasn't even been reported in the US yet. Cardinal Foley was very well known and liked.


US Cardinal John Patrick Foley dies

Vatican Radio
Dec. 11, 2011

Cardinal John Patrick Foley, Grand Master Emeritus of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem died today. He was 76. The Cardinal had been suffering from Leukaemia and had returned to Philadelphia in the US.


In his comments to Vatican Radios Italian service, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi said “everyone who had ever met Cardinal Foley admired and loved him for his kindness and for his spirituality.”

Father Lombardi also recalled the Cardinal’s work in the field of communication as President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications saying, he was always well prepared and very competent.

He added, that he had just received in the last few days a letter from Cardinal Foley thanking him for a copy of the newly published book on the History of Vatican Radio.


****************


Here is more detail about the cardinal.


Cardinal Foley dies; was Vatican communications chief, Mideast advocate

By Catholic News Service
Dec. 11, 2011

DARBY, Pa. (CNS) -- U.S. Cardinal John P. Foley, who spent more than two decades leading the church's social communications council and later worked for the church in the Middle East, died Dec. 11 after a battle with leukemia. The cardinal, who had been residing at Villa St. Joseph, the home for retired Philadelphia archdiocesan priests, was 76.

Cardinal Foley's media-friendly style and quick sense of humor shone in person and throughout the numerous speeches and homilies he delivered around the world. He often spoke of the joys of working for the church, telling his audiences that while the pay often is not great "the benefits are out of this world."

Last February he retired from his post as grand master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, a chivalric organization dedicated to supporting the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and to responding to the needs of Catholics in the Holy Land.

Addressing the 2010 Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, he said he was convinced that "the continued tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians has contributed greatly to the turmoil in all of the Middle East and also to the growth of Islamic fundamentalism."

"While many, including the Holy See, have suggested a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the more time passes, the more difficult such a solution becomes, as the building of Israeli settlements and Israeli-controlled infrastructure in East Jerusalem and in other parts of the West Bank make increasingly difficult the development of a viable and integral Palestinian state," the cardinal said.

He told participants in a U.S.-based conference on the Holy Land in 2009, "The most tragic thing I have seen is the miles-long wall that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem and separates families and keeps farmers from the land that has been in their families for generations. It is humiliating and distressing."

The cardinal said he understood Israel's need for security but added, "many of these measures raise serious human rights issues that they refuse to acknowledge and address."

To many, the cardinal was the voice they heard giving commentary during the pope's Christmas midnight Mass. For 25 years, beginning in 1984, his voice was heard not only in North America, but also Asia, Africa, Europe and, for many years, Australia.

The longtime journalist told Catholic News Service in 2007 that he always tried to take "a positive approach toward the means of communication and toward the people who run them." For decades he helped media gain access to cover or rebroadcast Vatican events.

As head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from 1984 to 2009, the cardinal took the lead in articulating Catholic policy with regard to the media. Under his leadership, the council issued separate documents on ethical standards in advertising, communications and the Internet. It also produced a document denouncing pornography.

He helped launch the first Catholic program bank for Catholic broadcasters and encouraged efforts to narrow the "digital divide" separating countries where there is widespread access to the Internet and where there is almost none either because of poverty or government efforts to restrict citizens' access to information.

His time at the council coincided with the unfolding of the clergy sex abuse scandal -- first in North America, then in other parts of the world. He said the sexual abuse of children by priests was only "the tip of an iceberg" of the wider scope of abuse perpetrated against the world's children.

"A much wider and even more tragic story of child abuse that takes place, first of all, in the family and then, in many ways, throughout society," he said.

However, the cardinal also said church officials must be honest about the situation. In dealing with the sex abuse scandal, he said, the church's reaction must be "to exercise virtue and, in the absence of virtue, exercise candor, which is a virtue itself. We have to be honest. We cannot deny what happened."

He said Catholic journalists sometimes have "encountered the situation of those who did not want others to learn about what they did ... because it was bad news."

"We know, as journalists, that the more some people try to cover up bad news, the more likely it is to be known," he said.

Born in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby on Nov. 11, 1935, he was ordained a priest in Philadelphia when he was 26.

The graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York said his media experience dated back to the seventh grade, when he started writing radio plays on the lives of saints. Not only were his plays aired but, at age 14, he was asked to be an announcer for Sunday morning programming for what was then WJMJ in Philadelphia.

Between stints as assistant editor of Philadelphia's archdiocesan paper, The Catholic Standard & Times, in the 1960s, he completed his graduate studies in philosophy in Rome, where he also worked as a news reporter. His beat included covering the Second Vatican Council from 1963 to 1965.

In 1970, he was appointed editor of the archdiocesan paper, a position he held until Pope John Paul II named him an archbishop and appointed him head of the social communications council in 1984.

Cardinal Foley has received numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Catholic Press Association's highest prize, the St. Francis de Sales Award.

Noted atheist and recent advocate to have the Pope arrested during his trip to England dies from cancer.


Author, pundit Christopher Hitchens dies at 62

By Hillel Italie,
Associated Press
Dec. 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens, the author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes on the left and right and wrote the provocative best-seller "God is Not Great," died Thursday night after a long battle with cancer. He was 62.

Hitchens' death was announced in a statement from Conde Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair magazine. The statement says he died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was atthe bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

A most-engaged, prolific and public intellectual who enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus and canceled a tour for his memoir "Hitch-22."

Hitchens, a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications, had become a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists that defied a recent trend of religious works. Cancer humbled, but did not mellow him. Even after his diagnosis, his columns appeared weekly, savaging the royal family or reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden.

"I love the imagery of struggle," he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane, he was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction -- half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully non-believing; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and enemies of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.

I thought this was kind of inspirational.


Special Father's Day for newly ordained Macomb native, 70

By Tom Dermody
The Catholic Post
Feb. 5, 2012

MACOMB -- As a NASA engineer involved in the Apollo and shuttle projects, Roy Runkle formerly launched rockets into space.

Now, as a newly ordained priest at age 70, the Macomb native says with a smile that he is “launching souls to heaven.”

This Father’s Day weekend had special meaning for Father Roy Runkle --- a widower, father, and grandfather who entered the seminary in 2005 after the death of his wife of 37 years, Mary. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama on June 6, Father Runkle was the principal celebrant and homilist of all three Masses June 19-20 at the church of his childhood, St. Paul’s Parish.

He is the first native son of St. Paul’s to be ordained a priest, according to Msgr. Richard Pricco, pastor.

“There were a lot of familiar faces, even back from when I was in grade school,” Father Runkle, the farm-raised son of Mildred and the late Harold Runkle, told The Catholic Post Sunday afternoon.

In his preaching last weekend, Father Runkle spoke of his own father’s influence, including that he “taught us how to pray.” Father Runkle recalled nightly family rosaries, and how he would sometimes accompany his father to his weekly adoration hour at St. Paul’s Church. Harold Runkle volunteered for the midnight to 1 a.m. prayer shift.

“We’d go back home and, as a farmer, he would get up at 4 a.m. or so. That made a real impression on me,” said Father Runkle.

FROM SPACE TO SEMINARY

Young Roy Runkle would go on to make a real impression on the U.S. space program. After obtaining a degree in physics from Western Illinois University, he landed a job at NASA in Huntsville. He eventually helped design a deployment mechanism for the lunar rover --- the dune-buggy like vehicle used to transport astronauts further around the moon’s surface during the last three Apollo missions.

When the Apollo program gave way to space shuttle missions, Roy Runkle engineered the “world’s largest parachutes” -- three chutes weighing 2,200-pounds each -- to float the massive solid rocket boosters safely back to an ocean splashdown after lift-off.

While as a boy he had felt God’s “nudge” toward the priesthood, it “was never the right time.” He even considered it early in his career, “but then I met Mary.” He called his wife “the closest thing to a saint I’ll ever know.”

They had a daughter, Desiree, who is now married and has two children.

The Runkles were active members of Good Shepherd Parish in Huntsville. Roy served two terms as president of the parish council. He helped start a parish tithe program in which 10 percent of parish income is donated to outside causes, and led the parish’s Habitat for Humanity effort to construct a home each year for a needy community member. Both Roy and Mary made a Cursillo retreat in 1984, and Mary was active in bell choir and painted the image of the Good Shepherd that hangs in the church.

In 2003, Mary was diagnosed with liver cancer and given three months to live. She battled for two years, long enough to see her grandson born.

Early on the morning of the Fourth of July, 2005, it was evident Mary would soon die. At 5 a.m., Roy called his parish pastor, who came and administered the sacramental anointing of the sick.

Father Roy Runkle will never forget what happened at that moment.

“For me, the room lit up with bright lights -- and I knew angels were present,” he recalls. “No one else saw them.” But he knew he wanted to be an instrument of such grace as well.

After the funeral, he told the pastor of his experience and desire to pursue the priesthood.

“He told me ‘I’m not surprised, but let’s give it another two months.’” Two months later, the desire remained.

While her father was certain of his new direction, his daughter wasn’t. “She’d just lost her mother and was worried she would now be ‘losing’ her father and the grandfather of her children, too,” said Father Runkle. “I said I would always be those things, but that God was asking her to share me. And she saw that.”

He enrolled at Blessed John XXII Seminary in Massachussetts, which specializes in older vocations. “It was great,” he said. “I never doubted for a moment I was in the right place.”

Father Runkle was ordained on June 6, and in July begins his first assignment as associate pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Madison, Ala., which is very near Huntsville.

“God is good,” he said of the appointment near his family -- including his mother, now 92 and a resident of a nursing home in Huntsville.

The former NASA official is grateful for how God has engineered his life.

“God has blessed me with great parents, a wonderful job, a wonderful marriage and family,” he said. Now he hopes to bring joy and hope to others as a priest.

“I’m not worthy, but God uses us as his hands and feet,” he said, adding he hopes to be “a loving, caring priest.”

He expressed gratitude to Msgr. Pricco for his graciousness last week, and said “without exception” he has been welcomed by the priests of his new diocese.

I stumbled upon this article from 3 1/2 years ago about one of the two princesses who are great fans of Benedict and who seem to have reformed their lives in part because of him. I remember when Alessandra's book about Benedict's Bavaria was published but I have never read it. I think it would be quite interesting as would the other one mentioned in the article about her experiences as a volunteer at Lourdes.


Alessandra Borghese: the prodigal daughter

The Telegraph
13 Jun 2008


European aristocrat, Princess Alessandra Borghese, talks to Peter Stanford about her well-documented return to Catholicism


The reformed rake is a familiar figure in the religious canon from the parable of the prodigal son onwards.

Princess Alessandra Borghese, 44-year-old scion of one of the grandest of Italian noble families, famous for its popes, cardinals and glorious villa and park in the centre of Rome, may never quite have been a rake, but otherwise neatly fits the mould.

In the 1990s, she was one of those European aristocrats whose names we came to know only because they were forever appearing in glossy magazines, attending all the right grand weddings and openings. She even published an A-to-Z guide to good manners with her great friend, the German Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, better known in the society pages as the 'punk princess' or 'Princess TNT'.

Alessandra Borghese's personal wealth - her mother, Countess Fabrizia Citterio, was one of the heirs to the San Pellegrino water fortune- funded her very own cultural centre in Rome, and she married into more money in the form Greek shipping tycoon, Constantine Niarcose. All of which feels a million miles away from the slight, guarded woman sitting opposite me, sipping an espresso in a London café, her clothes simple, her face without a hint of make-up, and her conversation all about God.

In 1999, she recalls, looking me straight in the eye, she had a meeting. 'Catholicism is not a philosophy, neither is it a theology, but it is a meeting with a person. So the moment you meet Jesus Christ, your life can change radically. That is when I started to look at everything differently.' Borghese has since that meeting, become Italy's best-known born-again Catholic.

Her 2004 book, With New Eyes, the story of her return to the fold, was a bestseller in her home country and over much of Catholic Europe. She has followed it with four other equally successful, equally personal, devotional works, including In The Footsteps of Joseph Ratzinger, her first outing in English, published this month.

As we talk, I find myself more than once referring to her conversion, but, as she points out, that is not the right word for she was raised Catholic. "I was brought up to know that my family had given a very important pope to the church, Paul V [at the start of the seventeenth century], so important that his name is written on the façade of Saint Peter's Basilica itself, along with our coat of arms.'

As she quotes the Latin inscription, she raises the little finger of her left hand to show me the same crest on the small ring she is wearing. 'But for me growing up, that was all history. I didn't participate in it.' She was, she says, 'very conformist' as a young woman. 'I couldn't care less about praying, about the Church, I had to be emancipated.'

Her distaste for such a notion is immediately apparent but is revealed in full later, when the question of women priests -banned by Catholicism - comes up. 'If you're Catholic and want to be a woman priest,' she protests, 'join the Anglicans or the Protestants. Why do you want to change the Catholic tradition according to your point of view? If you look at Holy Mary, you see that her grandeur was not because she did anything, but because she was able to stand behind something bigger.' It is not a position that sits easily with contemporary secular norms, but Borghese has a rather aristocratic disdain for conventional wisdom.

Her attachment to traditional Catholic values is as fierce as it is unapologetic. On the evening of our meeting, she is due to address an audience at the Brompton Oratory, bastion of the unreformed approach to the faith in London.

Her own successful career, as an author, has nothing to do with female emancipation, she insists. 'Sometimes you should try to make a step back, not forward, and you can be very useful to a bigger scheme. I know its difficult because we live in a society where we are all pushed to be in front, to be visible. If you don't appear, you don't exist. You have to be seen, be successful, be good looking, be cool. But it just isn't true.'

There is, arguably, an autobiographical reference to her own younger days in there. Was there a particular trigger for her return to Catholicism? The same date she quotes for it was also, I point out, the year when her husband died, reportedly of a cocaine overdose. 'No, it was not because of that. I wouldn't relate it to that.'

Up to now fluent, she suddenly gets flustered. 'No, no'. She pauses. 'My reasons were more banal. That is why I wanted to write it. Because it can happen to anyone.'

When With New Eyes first appeared, she recalls, she was overwhelmed by letters from people who had had similar experiences of drawing closer to God. Or who wanted that to happen. 'I think they felt encouraged because I was such an inappropriate person for this to happen to. But that is what made me so appropriate.'

It is a telling point, and, in making it, her confidence returns quickly. But what gives Borghese's new book its particular charm is that, for all her protestations of being ordinary, she clearly retains a privileged entrée in church circles. As In The Footsteps of Joseph Ratzinger demonstrates.

It is a kind of voyage around the Holy Father. Or, to be more particular, a voyage around his native Bavaria, in the company of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis whose 500-room Schloss St Emmeram is located there. 'To call it a house,' Borghese admits, 'might provoke a smile'.

The two princesses travel to various sites associated with the young Pope Benedict, meet his brother, also a priest, and end up, as the book's climax, being summoned for a private audience with the Pontiff as he makes his first visit to his homeland since his election in 2005.'Gloria and I,' Borghese writes, 'had intended to mix with the crowds and wait for the Pope anonymously. However, Providence arranged things otherwise.

The mayor, whom we had met only a few weeks previously, invited us to sit in seats that had been reserved for him…Entirely unexpectedly, [the Pope] also paused to greet us. I enthusiastically told him how much I had been struck by the beauty of his land. Kind as always, he nodded and thanked me'.

Sometimes, we have a tendency to see rulers - be they kings, presidents, prime ministers or popes - in terms of their policies rather than simply as individuals. With her unique access to man who, since his election, has not given interviews, how, I wonder, would Borghese describe the private Benedict XVI? 'He's very polite. He makes me feel immediately comfortable and important to him.

He looks into my eyes and asks me how I feel, how things are going, with a sweet politeness. And then he is a simple and straightforward person. Maybe a little bit shy.' Her focus on his roots in Bavaria inevitably raises the question about Benedict's attitude, as a young man, to the Nazi party. For, as she points out, Markel am Inn, where he was born in 1927, lies just across the river from Braunau am Inn where, 38 years earlier, Adolf Hitler, had entered this world.

'There is nothing to defend the Pope's reputation about,' she protests. 'People have tried to find hidden things, relationships with Nazis, but there is nothing. He was a young boy. He was a soldier. He did his job. He did what every other young boy would have done then. And then he became a priest. There is nothing to be discovered. No scandal.' Her expression makes plain there nothing more to discuss.

What, I can't help asking, do her old friends, from her pre-1999 days, think of her now in her role as arch-Catholic? 'Of course, they think I am strange. People look at me in a weird way, but others respect me. It is life. It doesn't worry me. Because the great thing when you rediscover faith is that you don't feel alone anymore. And so you are stronger.' The inference is that she felt alone before that rediscovery. 'No, its not that I felt alone, rather that, even though I had everything, something was missing.'

In the Borghese family tree there is a line that leads back, some say, to Saint Catherine of Siena, the fourteenth century mystic. She was, like many saints of the church, someone who turned her back on worldly goods in order to follow God. Is such a renunciation something Borghese has contemplated? She laughs at the comparison. 'I am a million kilometers away from being such a saint. But everybody has his or her own big or little mission.'

Hers, she makes clear, is simply to write, to be, as she puts it, 'a witness to the possibility in our age of rediscovering faith'. In her quieter moments, she works as a volunteer helper at the French Marian shrine of Lourdes - an experience that she has made into a book, just out in Italy and already, she tells me, another bestseller. And, recently, she stood as a candidate for the Italian Senate, on the list of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats.

'But there was no hope of being elected,' she stresses. ' It is a tiny party, though if the electoral rules had been different. I could have won a seat.'

We are just moving on to her political ambitions - she is charmingly but firmly refusing to be drawn on what she thinks of Silvio Berlusconi - when we are joined by Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and her daughter. They are in London too and there are plans to visit Christie's.

'I think we have finished,' Borghese says. Her voice goes up at the end, as if asking a question, but her intention is clear.

I slip in a final question. When she looks back to her 'other life' in the 1990s, does she have any regrets? 'No,' she fires back immediately, 'because I haven't lost anything. I am a much freer person. Much more open to the world, so I see that time as a sort of preparation. I don't want to change what has happened. I want to change what I am living now.'

I hate to see this guy go. I liked him and Papa seemed to like him too but he certainly has been unsuccessful holding his flock together.


Head of Anglican church to step down

By the CNN Wire Staff
CNN.com
2012-03-16

London (CNN) -- Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the 85 million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion, announced Friday he will step down from his post at the end of the year.

Williams has been Archbishop of Canterbury, the top role in the Church of England, for 10 years.

He has accepted the position of master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, starting in January, a statement on his website said.

Williams said: "It has been an immense privilege to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury over the past decade, and moving on has not been an easy decision."

He thanked those who had "brought vision, hope and excitement" to his ministry.

He has informed Queen Elizabeth II of his decision, the archbishop's office said. As supreme governor of the Church of England, the queen will formally appoint his successor.

The Crown Nominations Commission will consider who will follow Williams in the role "in due course," his office said.

The secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, wrote to senior church leaders to announce Williams' resignation, the Anglican Communion News Service reports on its website.

Williams' time in office had "coincided with a period of turmoil, change and development in the Anglican Communion, and his careful leadership, deeply rooted in spirituality and theology, has strengthened and inspired us all in the Communion during this time," Kearon is quoted as saying.

The issues of homosexuality and women bishops have caused public tensions and division within the Communion during Williams' tenure.

Millions around the world also watched him celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, in April.

Born in Wales in 1950, Williams studied theology at Cambridge and was an academic before going into the church. He became bishop of Monmouth in 1991 and was appointed the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002.

Fr. Robert Barron to head Mundelein Seminary

Chicago, Ill., May 11, 2012 / 06:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Francis George of Chicago has named Catholic communicator and evangelist Father Robert L. Barron as the rector and president of the University of St. Mary of the Lake and Mundelein Seminary.

“As a priest of Jesus Christ I accept this responsibility with joy,” Fr. Barron said May 10. “The appointment brings together many of the elements that have long been of great importance to me, namely, the priesthood, theological scholarship, pastoral care and evangelization.”

Fr. Barron is founding director of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, a nonprofit media organization to support Catholic evangelism through the lives of the saints and through the Catholic traditions of art, architecture, poetry, philosophy and theology.

In 2011 Fr. Barron created the television series “Catholicism” to explain the history and the self-understanding of the Catholic faith. The series, which was well-received, aired on public television and on EWTN.

The priest was ordained in 1986. He received a masters of arts in philosophy from the Catholic University of America before attending the University of St. Mary and Mundelein Seminary. He has a master’s degree in divinity and a licentiate in sacred theology from the university. He received a doctorate in sacred theology at the Institute Catholique de Paris.

He is a Chicago native with family at St. John of the Cross Parish in the suburb of Western Springs. After his ordination, he served as associate pastor at St. Paul of the Cross Parish in the Park Ridge suburb.

He has been a full-time faculty member of Mundelein Seminary since 1992. Fr. Barron has served as a visiting professor at the Unviersity of Notre Dame and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has been scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican twice.

Fr. Barron said that he will continue to “set the ethos” for Word on Fire and will provide new media content to “enhance the Church’s outreach to the culture.”

“The mission of evangelization will continue to be a priority for me, and Word on Fire is essential to this mission,” he said.

Mundelein is the major seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago, with national and international reach. It has an enrollment of 250 students, 165 of whom are seminarians preparing to become diocesan priests in 25 dioceses.

Its institutes of diaconal studies and lay formation help prepare over 400 men and women for service to the Church. Its ongoing formation program held courses for 1,200 participants in the last year.

Fr. Barron’s appointment will take effect July 1. He will succeed Msgr. Dennis J. Lyle, who has served as rector for six years.

Cardinal Schonborn: A faithful Catholic minority can re-convert Europe

By David Kerr

Rome, Italy, May 26, 2012 / 06:03 am (CNA).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna believes the small but growing number of faithful Catholic families in Europe can win the continent back to the Christian faith.

“I see our young, believing families with four or five or six or more children and how they live in the midst of this society – they are really the New Evangelization not through words, but through the fact of living the happiness of a believing family,” he told CNA May 14 in Rome.

“We are now a minority – the baptized Christians in Austria are 70 percent but practicing Catholics are 10 percent -- but if these 10 percent are convincing and convinced, they can change the country, just as happened in the Roman Empire.”

One key to the success of the New Evangelization, he asserted, is the lifework of his former tutor and lifelong friend Pope Benedict XVI, whose primary legacy, he believes, will eventually be summed up in three words – “fides et ratio” (faith and reason).

“From the very beginning of his ministry, the Pope has stressed that Christian faith, Christian life is not first of all a series of doctrines, not first of all as a series of rules, but a deepening friendship with Jesus. He (the Pope) is convinced that without faith you cannot understand Christian morals. Without faith you cannot understand Christian life. And therefore, I think the big challenge is really to deepen our faith. Call it new evangelization, call it mission – I think it has very much to do with conversion,” the cardinal explained.

“I would say he has this tremendous capacity to show, to make perceptible the coherence of our faith,” said the cardinal, who studied in the early 1970s under then-Professor Ratzinger at Regensburg University in Germany.

This ability, he suggested, allows Pope Benedict to present the teachings of the Catholic faith not “like bricks you have to carry on your shoulders” but instead “as a life, that it is coherent, that it corresponds to the desires of the heart, the real desires of the heart, that it corresponds to reality, that it is true in life, that is true in illness, true in situations of pain, and even it is true when you die.”

Cardinal Schönborn actually credits one particular homily preached by Cardinal Ratzinger in December 1979 with shaping his understanding of the role of a theologian in the Church.

“I was then 34 years old and teaching dogmatics in Switzerland, and he spoke about the ‘faith of the little ones’ and how the Magisterium of the Church has to defend the ‘faith of the little ones.’”

Since then the two men have often cooperated in their work, including, most notably, on the creation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992. Cardinal Schönborn is also a regular participant in the “Ratzinger Schülerkreis” (Ratzinger student circle), a group of former students that still meets every summer with their old academic mentor.

The cardinal explained how his greatest joy as a bishop has always been to “meet the deep faith of the little ones,” even if they are “really great ones like Pope Benedict or John Paul II, but before God they were little ones.”

A persistent optimist, Cardinal Schönborn also believes that there is still “deep faith in the world,” including in Europe, “where exteriorly speaking faith seems to vanish but there are still many deep believers, and we have to nourish their faith.”

He is currently in Rome for a quarterly meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he is a member. Interestingly, one of the department’s more persistent problems comes from ongoing protests by Austrian priests and laity who are demanding a liberalization of Church teaching. About 7.5 percent of Austria’s 4,000 clergy belong to an initiative that last June published a “Call for disobedience.”

“I do not depreciate the elder generation; I myself am now 67, so I belong to the elder generation,” the cardinal remarked, “but it is fascinating to see that in these movements, be in that lay initiative ‘We are the Church,’ be it the priests protesting, there are practically no young priests. ”

He thinks that the root of the problem is “a certain nostalgia” among older clergymen who “seriously think, ‘if the Church would be a little bit more liberal, finally we could breath, and the Church would be filled again and the acceptance of the Church would be as it was in the 50s and 60s.’”

But Cardinal Schönborn described this thinking as “a dream” and “an illusion.”

The issue reached global prominence on Holy Thursday this year when Pope Benedict XVI used his Chrism Mass homily at St. Peter’s Basilica to publicly rebuke the actions of the dissenters.

“When the Call to Disobedience was published,” Cardinal Schönborn explained, “we said the word disobedience cannot stand because you cannot build up a Church life on the basis of disobedience. We have not yet taken sanctions because we still believe in the possibility of personal dialogue but we also clearly said: you will have to decide yourself.

Some observers have criticized the cardinal for not moving swiftly against those seeking to change the Church’s teaching.

When he asked if the time for action was near, Cardinal Schönborn replied, “God is immensely patient, but the danger is it provokes confusion for the faithful, and therefore I think it is time to come to a decision.”

Another issue that has put the Vienna cardinal in global headlines was his decision last month not to veto the already completed election of an openly homosexual man in a registered domestic partnership to a parish council within the archdiocese.

“I decided for very precise reasons, which I am not ready to expose to everybody, (that) this election was done. I do not overturn it. I let it stand,” the cardinal said.

He also strongly rejected any suggestion that his decision has undermined the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

Initially Cardinal Schönborn was intending to intervene with the supervisory body that oversees the elections to veto the selection of 26-year-old Florian Stangl in the northern Austrian village of Stützenhofen.

But after a week of consultations and a meeting with the young man, Cardinal Schönborn decided not to interfere.

The episode should “certainly, absolutely not be understood as a change to the Church's teaching on homosexuality,” he stressed. “You may believe me, I was the General Editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the teaching of the Catechism, especially in this respect.”

He said he regretted that in “our blog and internet society” everybody thinks they can “judge the situation without knowing all the precise details, but that’s our world.”

“Without entering into details, you can believe me that as a pastor I have had very clear words with this young man, and I am convinced that he is on a way as a young faithful in a difficult situation.”

He said his experience over many years is that “if a person with same-sex attraction discovers true, chaste friendship, this can be a real way out, a real way out of a situation that is very often a dramatic destruction of the person.”

“To live in promiscuity is really inhuman and destructive for the person,” the Austrian cardinal observed.

And he sees that there is a need for “good communities where people are not judged immediately, but also not just taken for granted. To find the right way between accepting the person as the Catechism says, but being clear on homosexuality as practice. To make the person aware that he is really esteemed, loved, and nevertheless, at the right moment, we say that his is not the true way.

“So, guiding a person in a difficult situation is always a real art. We should be very clear on the principles and very human on the steps to these principles,” the cardinal said. “As Pope Benedict always reminds us: one will not understand the teaching of the Church unless one has a true relation with Jesus Christ.”

A proud patriot, Cardinal Schönborn seemed somewhat frustrated by the external media image of Catholic Austria being one of dissent and protest. For him, this stereotype “is not the life of the Church.”

“Go to Mariazell, the national shrine, and this is also the shrine for the Hungarian and the Slavic peoples, and you will find what is the heart of the Austrian people – their love for Our Lady,” he said.