Don’t Let’s Be Beguiled In The Year Of Mercy

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francis and tagle fingers

At Aleteia, in light of announced the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Fr. Robert McTeigue offers some necessary instruction. By all means we must avoid a “facile, beguiling, and impoverished view of mercy and justice.”

Very often, I hear folks speak of mercy as if it were a cancellation of justice. On this view, “justice” means, “you have to pay off your debt—or else.” “Mercy”, then, says, “About that debt—never mind!” And who wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief when told that one’s debt has been dismissed, made irrelevant? That’s an appealing, even tempting image of justice and mercy, especially if you’ve ever been deeply in debt. Unfortunately, such a view tragically distorts justice and mercy. If left uncorrected, such a view runs the risk of making us unable to see or feel what is, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, “the weight of glory.” In other words, the roots of human dignity and the very character of God may be obscured by such a facile, beguiling, and impoverished view of mercy and justice.

To dismiss the demands of justice with a casual, “Never mind!” is not an exercise of mercy but is instead a dismissal of the moral order. To act as if mercy is a cancellation of the demands of justice is to act as if good and evil do not matter. But God is not glorified and man is not dignified by an erasure of the moral order. If the obligation to do good and avoid evil is not an ineradicable absolute, then God’s character and wisdom cannot be discerned in His creation. At the same time, that man is made in the image and likeness of God is made irrelevant. But surely no sane person could intend to bleach out the moral order with such a thoughtless propagation of such a casual and meaningless view of mercy as amoral and justice as dispensable. So, let’s try to recover the proper friendship between mercy and justice.

I agree with Father.  No sane person could intend such a thing.  So, let’s try and recover that ‘proper friendship’ in the new Time of Mercy and in the Year of Mercy.

In fact, let’s make it a crusade.

Read more….

 

 

 

Zero-Tolerance Sacrifice in Cardinal O’Malley’s Boston

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According to The Media Report, an injustice has been done to the administration and staff of a working-class Boston area Catholic school.  Apparently there’s been a group firing just because a tenured custodian went to the bathroom before a child walked in afterwards.  This sounds like a brand new low in punishing innocent Catholic employees.

Has anyone noticed that we are living in the totalitarian state they used to warn us about in school and science fiction?

In a way it was inevitable: After years of media hysteria over the issue of sex abuse in the Catholic Church, Church officials have now decided on a policy of “shoot first, ask questions later” when it comes to even the scantest allegations of impropriety.

In January of this year, in an astonishing act of injustice, Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley forced the resignations of three individuals from a Catholic school in Revere, despite the fact that no one broke any law or did anything wrong.

If it were not clear already, it should be clear now: “Zero tolerance” has now fully morphed into paranoia and cruelty.

A 64-year old custodian went to the restroom just outside his office which he’d been using for 17 years.  No boys were in there at the time.  The school apparently has an unfortunate rule against adults and children using the same restroom.  (There was a time when people understood an adult monitoring a school restroom was a good thing.)

If it wasn’t for such rules and the cruel excuses for making them, mothers like the one in this story wouldn’t be frightened into lodging complaints.

Like many urban Catholic schools, Immaculate Conception School in Revere (on the working-class outskirts of Boston) lacks adequate space, so it had been a “common practice for a number of years” in the school for adults to use the student restroom so long as there was not a student already in there.

Well, at some point at the end of last year, a mother called the school to report that her kindergarten-aged son felt “uncomfortable” walking into the restroom and seeing the school’s 64-year-old custodian using a urinal. (The restroom was just steps away opposite the janitor’s office.) [Addendum, 3/18/15: The Revere Advocate reported in late January that the janitor used the bathroom in question “for upwards of 17 years without incident.”]

At no time did anyone ever report or even suggest that anyone had committed any behavior in the least bit sexual or criminal. Never.

In other words, the boy walked into the restroom and saw what anyone would see if he walked into any public men’s restroom – such as at the theater or Boston’s Fenway Park.

Probably in an effort to comply with insanely strict diocesan policy, the school eventually contacted police.  When Cardinal O’Malley was notified, he fired the principal, a parish priest, and a teacher.

The school was at a loss at how to respond to the mother’s phone call, but at some point, someone came up with the idea that the concern should somehow be reported to law enforcement. Big mistake.

Overreacting, Cardinal O’Malley and the Archdiocese of Boston immediately forced the resignations of three employees of the parish and its school: Father George Szal, the popular parish priest; Alison Kelly, the school’s principal; and an unnamed second-grade teacher.

The Cardinal’s reason for forcibly removing the trio was that the group had somehow failed to report the issue to law enforcement and the archdiocese “in a timely manner.” Shockingly, the archdiocese reportedly gave the three “an ultimatum – resign or be fired.”

Yet even after both local police and the local district attorney investigated the case and discovered that nothing even remotely criminal had occurred, Cardinal O’Malley still would not reverse his impetuous decision. The lives of four innocent people (the trio plus the custodian) would remain tarnished.

It doesn’t add up.  Aren’t there enough real scandals in the Boston Church that require action?  Is this an attempt to make some zero-tolerance quota?  Why sacrifice the innocent?

Out of control Boston school up to no good

Out of control Boston school up to no good

….or the faithful?

 

 

 

 

Mass. Knights Back Off Pro-Gay St. Patrick Parade: Blast Catholic Group, Free Media

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knights march 2

Exposed for their collaboration with anti-Catholic and immoral groups in the Boston St. Patrick’s parade, the Knights of Columbus have backed down, but not without a complaint against those who exposed them.

The Massachusetts Knights of Columbus withdrew from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston on Sunday, saying that their motives for participating in the parade – which this year included a gay activist group – have been misrepresented.

The Knights asked people to pray during the march in honor of St. Patrick, who was famous for bringing Christianity to pagan Ireland.

A statement released by the Knights said that they had intended to march in the parade “as a Catholic witness, to honor this great Catholic saint, and in gratitude for the contributions of Irish Americans to our country.”

The organization said that it had wanted to run a float with both pro-life signs and other posters encouraging participation in charitable activities.

However, a source close to the situation told CNA that the Knights were ambushed by a campaign that smeared their motives and created confusion.

C.J. Doyle, executive director of Boston’s “Catholic Action League,” alleged that the Knights were acting “treacherously” and that their actions were actually “helping (the activist group) spread their message.”

Doyle said that the Knights were colluding to give cover to the parade’s organizers and Boston’s mayor for the parade’s inclusion of a homosexual advocacy group. He pointed to the fact that the mayor’s hometown of Dorchester was also the town in which the Massachusetts leader of the Knights of Columbus resided.

But CNA’s source said that the allegations were false and that the Knights had not been contacted about the situation or asked for clarification.

It’s an unnamed source’s word against Doyle.  The establishment can send out slurs anonymously?

“The fact is that Doyle and his group created a scandal,” the source said. “The Knights were marching in defense of the faith, and did not want to leave the parade because they wanted someone in the parade to continue to stand for Church teaching. They believed that pulling out of this parade would abandon it entirely to non-Catholic elements, and that this would not be helpful to the evangelization of the people of Boston.”

That’s the whole point.  Leave the parade to the non-Catholics.  Let them have their ‘victory’ and stop giving scandal by collaborating.

“But in the end, Doyle and his group generated so much misinformation and so many attacks that the good the Knights were trying to do was literally overwhelmed by his claims.”

Doyle had encouraged his followers to contact the Knights and complain, and according to one source, many did, with profanity-laced phone calls and social media posts.

I guess we’ll just have to take Mr. Anonymous’s word for that, but I don’t believe it.

“The lack of charity by these people who called themselves Catholics was stunning,” someone who knew several of the Knights receiving the calls told CNA. “And it didn’t help that groups like MassResistance and the Michael Voris’ Church Militant picked these allegations and ran them uncritically.”

That’s right.  We lack charity.  You know what else?  We’re un-merciful too.  I guess Michael Voris didn’t check enough anonymous sources before ‘running’ with the bogus story?

Every day we see more and more, it’s ‘c’atholics against Catholics in the new FrancisChurch.