Archbishop John Nienstedt, "I Have Been Impressed With His Scholarship, His Teaching Abilities And His Organizational Skills.”

Archbishop John Nienstedt

Jesuit Father Peter Ryan has been named the new executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs. The selection of a Jesuit spiritual director, teacher and scholar, who has defended Church teaching in his academic work, will draw renewed scrutiny of the U.S. bishops’ efforts to address problematic theological texts, while also recruiting academics to help advance the New Evangelization. Father Ryan’s primary responsibility is to serve the USCCB doctrine committee, which provoked a furor among some American theologians after it issued a 2011 statement strongly criticizing a popular undergraduate textbook written by Sister of St. Joseph Elizabeth Johnson, a theologian at Fordham University and the former president of the Catholic Theological Society. The USCCB announced on May 28 that Father Ryan would replace Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, who had signaled his decision to resign earlier this year.

Archbishop John Nienstedt of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the chairman of the doctrine committee, told the Register that Father Ryan first came to his attention “eight years ago, when we worked on the Vatican seminary visitation together. I have been impressed with his scholarship, his teaching abilities and his organizational skills.”

Archbishop Nienstedt also underscored the distinctive mission of the committee: “Unlike other USCCB committees, doctrine is less pro-active in terms of initiatives, serving, rather, as a resource to the bishops in clarifying doctrinal issues.” However, the committee has also reached out to scholars, organizing a March 2013 exchange between bishops and academics that addressed the need to promote the New Evangelization and focused on potential areas of collaboration.

“Father Ryan’s work as a moral theologian will prepare him for his duties as the director of the committee on doctrine of the USCCB. Much of the committee’s work will deal with questions emerging from the field of moral theology,” Brian Benestad, a professor of theology at the University of Scranton, told the Register.

“He is a very fair person who will listen carefully to what theologians have to say about their approach to theology and to the various theological issues that are being discussed today. Thinking with the Church will always be an important source of guidance for Father Ryan,” added Benestad, who has served with the Jesuit on the executive board of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Link (here) to the National Catholic Register

Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J. Was A Former Board Member Of The Cardinal Newman Society

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have named Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J., as executive director for the secretariat of doctrine and canonical affairs. The announcement was made May 29. Fr. Ryan will assume the responsibilities in August. Fr. Ryan is a former member of The Cardinal Newman Society's board of directors. He is replacing Fr. Thomas Weinandy, who is retiring. Fr. Ryan is a member of the Maryland province of the Society of Jesus, and has been director of spiritual formation at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. In 2011, the National Catholic Reporter asserted that a Theological Studies article defending the prohibition of divorce and remarriage, written by Fr. Peter Ryan and Dr. Germain Grisez, was "unedited" and did not undergo the "normal peer review" process. The Vatican asked that the article be published in the journal.

Link (here) to the Cardinal Newman Society

Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J. "New Doctrinal Watchdog At USCCB

Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J.

The U.S. bishops' conference has named a Jesuit known for conventional views on marriage and sexuality as its new doctrinal watchdog, replacing a key staffer behind several controversial criticisms of theologians in recent years. Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J. will become executive director of the bishops' secretariat of doctrine and canonical affairs in August, the conference announced Wednesday. 

The appointment, which comes as the bishops' conference prepares a change in its top leadership in the fall, may be a sign of what stance the bishops will take toward those who hold more progressive viewpoints under the new pontificate of Pope Francis. 

Ryan, a member of his order's Maryland province, had been director of spiritual formation at the St. Louis archdiocese's Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. He will replace Capuchin Fr. Thomas Weinandy at the doctrinal office.

Link (here) to The Fishwrap

Jesuit On The Advent Tradition Of "Boy Bishops"

One of the more novel traditions associated with the Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra is the enthronement of boy bishops, cathedral choristers whose honorary episcopacy lasted until the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28th. In the pages of William Hone's Every-day Book, an English almanac of the nineteenth-century, we find the following description of the tradition of the boy bishop:

Anciently on the 6th of December, it being St. Nicholas's Day, the choir boys in cathedral churches, chose one of their number to maintain the state and authority of a bishop, for which purpose the boy was habited in rich episcopal robes, wore a mitre on his head, and bore a crosier in his hand; and his fellows, for the time being, assumed the character and dress of priests, yielded him canonical obedience, took possession of the church, and except mass, performed all the ecclesiastical ceremonies and offices.

Link (here) to the full and fascinating post by Jesuit Joe at his blog entitled City and the World

Diocese Of Yakima Pays 205K In Case Involving Jesuit

The Catholic Diocese of Yakima agreed last month to pay $205,000 to a woman who sued over sexual abuse she said took place at the hands of a Jesuit priest in the 1970s. 

The woman, identified as M.P. in the suit filed in April 2010 in Yakima County Superior Court, settled last year with the Jesuits for $288,000. Both suits stem from abuse she said occurred in 1977 when she was 8 years old at St. Joseph’s Parish, which was run by the Jesuits until last summer. The priest in question, Fr. Francis Duffy, S.J., had been accused of molesting girls in Oregon before he was transferred to Yakima, where he served until 1989. He died in 1992.

The woman’s lawyer, Bryan Smith of Tamaki Law Offices in Yakima, hailed the settlement as an overdue acknowledgment of responsibility. Previously, he said, the diocese had placed all of the blame for Duffy’s abuse on the Jesuits. "The Yakima Diocese had not acknowledged any type of responsibility for Father Duffy despite the fact he preached in this town under their supervision for 20 years," Smith said. The Rev. Robert Siler, diocese chief of staff, characterized the settlement differently. The diocese needs "to prudently protect its legal rights" and taking the matter to court could have proved costly. But the diocese was unaware Duffy had abused anyone when he came to Yakima, Siler said. "We simply did not know," he said. 

The settlement, he noted, does not mean the diocese has accepted legal responsibility."Consistently, the Jesuits have always accepted responsibility for assigning and supervising the priests they’ve had come to Yakima," Siler said. The lawsuit acknowledged that the diocese may not have known, but still asserted that it bore responsibility. "We never got a jury determination on that," Smith said. "It’s our position that they knew or should have known. ... There is a long history of the diocese knowing about abuse committed within its jurisdiction and borders and doing nothing about it." 

Over the past decade, the diocese has confirmed the names of more than a dozen clergymen who have served in the diocese and who have been publicly accused of sexual abuse. And, though the diocese did not accept legal liability in this settlement, Bishop Joseph Tyson wrote a letter of apology to the woman and has offered to meet with her for discussion and counsel, Siler said. "We’re very sorry for any abuse the victim has suffered, particularly any abuse at the hand of Father Duffy," he said. But that language, "any abuse," falls short of the true mea culpa Smith said he would like to see from the diocese. Still, despite the diocese not taking legal responsibility, his client is relieved with the outcome, he said. "Any time the church pays money to settle a case, it’s an acknowledgment of wrongdoing," Smith said. "That’s how I view it."

Link (here) to The Yakima Herald

"Bury Me At The Feet Of Aloysius Gonzaga."

St. Aloysius Gonzaga, S.J.

The Jesuits lost a devoted friend in the person of St. Charles Borromeo, who died in 1584. It is a calumny to say that he had turned against them and had taken the seminary of Milan from their direction. It was they themselves who had asked to be relieved of the responsibility, for he had so multiplied their colleges in his diocese, that it was impossible to give the seminary the attention it required. It is true that he was greviously offended by one individual Jesuit who injected himself into a controversy that was going on between the governor and the archbishop, and assailed the great prelate in the pulpit of the very church which had been given to the Society by Borromeo; but Claudio Aquaviva quickly brought him to the cardinal's feet to ask forgiveness, and then suspended him for two years from preaching. That incident, however, in no way diminished the affection of the saint for the Society. His last Mass was said in the Jesuit novitiate which he had founded, and he died in the arms of his Jesuit confessor, Father Adorno, two days afterwards. Seven years later, on June 21, 1591, another saint died, the young Aloysius Gonzaga. Borromeo knew him well, and had given him his first Communion. This boy saint was not only an angel of purity, but also a martyr of charity, for he died of a fever he had caught from the victims of a plague whom he was attending during a pestilence that devastated Italy. The venerable Robert Bellarmine was his confessor and spiritual father, and, later, when he was about to expire, he said to those around him: "Bury me at the feet of Aloysius Gonzaga."

Link (here) to the Jesuits

Fordham Theology Department Under Scrutiny

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl

In an 11-page response to Sister Elizabeth's extensive June 1 defense of her 2007 book, "Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God," the bishops said her explanation did nothing to change their minds. Sister Elizabeth said then that the bishops misunderstood and misrepresented the book's main points. The committee, chaired by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, said that Sister Elizabeth's response to their original critique of March 24 had "not in fact demonstrated that the committee has misunderstood or misrepresented the book." Sister Elizabeth, professor of systematic theology at Fordham and a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, was on sabbatical, but issued a statement in response early Oct. 28. She said she read the committee's statement with "sadness." She also said she was "disappointed" in the way the committee addressed its response, pointing to the process the bishops undertook, the content of their message and the result of their findings. "I want to make it absolutely clear that nothing in this book dissents from the church's faith about God revealed in Jesus Christ through the Spirit," she said. The bishops noted in their statement that Sister Elizabeth explained in her response that her book expresses the Catholic faith "in different words but with the same meaning." While commending Sister Elizabeth "for her stated intention to help the church progress in her understanding of divine realities," the bishops go on to say that the book "fails to fulfill this task because it does not sufficiently ground itself in the Catholic theological tradition as its starting point."

Link (here)

Jesuit On Excommuncation

Archbishop Donald Wuerl's appointment as a cardinal was not a surprise, said Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and author of "Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church."  

"He has been very well liked in the Vatican," Reese said. "He is very smart and takes the teaching role of the bishops seriously. He is no liberal, 

but he does not like confrontation, and has no interest in things like denying communion to pro-choice politicians or threatening people with excommunication."

Link (here) to read the full article.

Jesuit On Archbishop Dolan's Election As Head Of USCCB

“This is a signal that the conference wants to be a leader in the culture wars,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J. a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown. “The two vice-presidential finalists were the two most conservative on the ballot. That says something about where this conference is going.”

Link (here) to read the full story 

Because Of Apache Indians Bishop Needed Jesuits

They spent six months on the road, camping out in freezing weather, riding through the desert heat, 

enduring the theft of their horses and livestock, narrowly avoiding an Apache Indian attack. All for nothing. Bishop J.B. Lamey was the first archbishop of Santa Fe. A native Frenchman, Lamey was just 25 when he was sent to America, 

where he shuttled around Ohio before being sent to the Southwest. One of the first things he apparently noted was that his missions were lacking in Jesuit priests.
Link (here) to read the rest of the story.

Bishop To Be Installed At Jesuit University

Bishop Blase Cupich and Pope Benedict XVI

Bishop Blase Cupich on Friday will be installed as the sixth leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, leading an office that has been financially battered by the priest sex abuse scandal.

Cupich, 61, was appointed in June to replace retiring Bishop William Skylstad, former head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a key figure in the church's response to lawsuits from sex abuse victims. Skylstad made the controversial decision in 2004 to take the Spokane Diocese into bankruptcy court as lawsuits piled up, and a $48 million settlement was reached in 2007. But the diocese said earlier this week that continuing lawsuits may force it to sell churches to pay victims. However, Cupich's installation at Gonzaga University on Friday morning will focus on creating a better future for the diocese. Over 30 bishops from throughout the U.S. will attend the ceremony, including Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

Link (here) to the full story.

Photo (here)

Fr. Mitch Interviews Archbishop Raymond Burke

Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. conducts a fascinating interview with Archbishop Raymond Burke, watch it (here) at Gloria.tv

Fr. John Hardon, S.J. On Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

During the Tre Ore sermon which he preached on Good Friday some years ago, Fulton J. Sheen asked his audience:  

"If Jesus Christ thirsted for souls, must not a Christian also thirst? If He came to cast fire on the earth, must not a Christian be enkindled? Has he not called us to be His apostles and His ambassadors, in order that His Incarnation might be prolonged through the continued dispensation of the divine through the human?" 

He answered his own question by declaring that, "A Catholic who does not strive to spread his Faith is a parasite on the life of the Church."

 

 

Link (here) to the full essay by Fr. John Hardon, S.J. entitled Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen - Author, Orator and Missionary.

A Future Jesuit Cardinal?

With Cardinal Ouellet's departure for Rome, there is now only one -- Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte in Montreal. Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto will likely be made a cardinal this fall. Given that Cardinal Ouellet's successor in Quebec may not be made a cardinal -- Cardinal Ouellet's predecessor was not--it opens the possibility of a second cardinal outside of Quebec, where the Canadian Church's current vitality and future potential lies. It is now plausible that Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J. of Ottawa, who has been given important global assignments in recent years, may join Archbishop Collins in being admitted to the sacred college. After all, it was Archbishop Prendergast who was at Cardinal Ouellet's side in June during the height of the abortion controversy.

Link (here) to read the full article at The National Post.

Read the blog of Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J. entitled, The Journey of a Bishop (here).

Jesuit Archbishop To Be A Part Of Irish Apostalic Visitation

THE FORMER Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, is to take part in a special inquiry into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland. The Vatican announced earlier this week that the Apostolic Visitation, as it is known, will be made up of five senior prelates.

They include Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, Boston, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, New York, Archbishop Thomas Collins, Toronto, and Archbishop Terence Prendergast SJ, Ottawa.

The clergymen, all of Irish descent, have played leading roles in investigating and responding to allegations of sexual abuse and Church mishandling of abuse in their own countries.

Link (here) to the full article.

Jesuit On Groking

To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a good time to speak out and a not-so-good time.  And if we speak out in a not-so-good time, not only will our message get lost, but in that loss our credibility may be diminished.  So I’m not sure this is an auspicious moment for the church to make pronouncements, especially condemnatory ones, on matters relating to sexuality—whether it’s same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and, frankly, anything related to women.  To me, it doesn’t seem like the kairos.  I hope that the church groks this.

Link (here) to the full post by Fr. James Martin, S.J., his post is entitled,  Does the Church Grok It?

How In Heaven

Marquette University has seen much controversy erupt over its retraction of a job offer last week to sociologist Jodi O'Brien over her sexually explicit writings. But according to Christopher Wolfe, emeritus professor at Marquette University and director of Thomas International Center, the uproar has been over the wrong thing.

"The question that should be asked is not why Marquette President Father Robert A. Wild backed off the hiring," Wolfe writes, "but how in heaven did the hiring ever occur in the first place?" 

In a May 10 column for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Wolfe points out that O'Brien's writings included an article "which alternated turgid post-modernist prose with imaginative lesbian sex vignettes and dialogue, including gender-bending and domination."

The graphic imagery, as LifeSiteNews.com reported, was the reason Marquette University president Fr. Robert Wild cited for withdrawing the offer to O'Brien to become dean of the Marquette College of Arts and Sciences. 

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki (pictured) reportedly influenced the final decision, which sparked a furor on Marquette's campus

from advocates claiming discrimination against O'Brien because she is openly l@sbian.

But the problem with O'Brien's position, Wolfe continues, runs deeper than her vulgarity. 

Link (here) to the full Lifesite article by James Tillman

Symbolum Apostolorum

1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

3. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

4. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

5. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.

6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

7. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,

9. the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,

10. the forgiveness of sins,

11. the resurrection of the body,

12. and life everlasting.

Amen.

Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, James the Less, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Thaddeus, Simon, and Matthias

It is a very common mistake to suppose that the Apostles were transformed in an instant, on the Day of Pentecost, from ignorant Jewish fishermen into Saints and Doctors of the Church, or at all events that, with the exception of the necessary influence of our Lord's companionship, they were untaught in the things of God previously to the Resurrection. Against this error the very title of Father Coleridge's work on the Public Life of our Lord is an implicit protest. He calls the volumes of which the one just issued is the third, The Training of the Apostles—implying that this was the object most prominent, or at all events very prominent, in the mind of our Lord. 

During the portion of His Life treated of in the present volume this is more especially the case, and Father Coleridge gives the reason for it Hitherto our Lord had been rejected, indeed, and persecuted by His own, but now they go to further lengths. They invent the detestable calumny that all His works are done through the agency of the prince of the devils, and thus they draw away many of the people from Him, and render it desirable that He should in His Divine Wisdom retire more into private and devote.

Himself more immediately to preparing His twelve Apostles for their future work. His public teaching, both by miracle and parable and undisguised warning, at this time of His partial withdrawal from the eye and notice of the people and their rulers, turns mainly on the danger of resisting the known Truth and the almost unpardonable sin involved in turning away the hearts of the ignorant from the Light by declaring the Divine Teacher inspired by the Evil One.

Link (here) to the portion of the essay entitled The Training of the Apostles, 

about the work of Fr. Henry James Coleridge, S.J.

"Heinus"

“The abuse is of particular weight when it comes to the Church, because children and youth give a special trust to the priests,” Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said ahead of the DBK’s conference in Freiburg, calling the crimes “heinous.”

The abuse scandal that was uncovered at Berlin’s prestigious Canisius school last month continues to grow, with around 50 former students claiming they were sexually abused in the 1970s and 1980s. But lawyers for victims have said more than 115 people across the country have since come forward with allegations of abuse by up to 12 different priests and teachers at other Catholic institutions too.

During the conference the bishops will discuss their “guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse of children by clergy” and “discuss possible changes,” Zollitsch said. Church leaders will also discuss preventative measures, he said.

“Our future priests must possess the necessary maturity and suitability - also regarding sexual matters - for their posts,” Zollitsch said. “Furthermore we want to discuss how we can in this difficult situation restore the reputation of Catholic schools.”

Last week Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa faced heavy criticism for claiming the sexual revolution was partially to blame for the widespread abuse of children at German Catholic schools.

Link (here) to the full story from the German focused news site The Local

The Disloyalty Of " Father William Holt the Jesuit"

He was well known to the leading Statesmen of the day for his ardent zeal and upright intentions, as well as for the straightforward manner in which he carried those intentions into effect, and in a letter dated 7th May 1591, (Harl. MS. 286, p. 76,) addressed from Calais to Sir Francis Walsingham by Richard Scholfield, clearly a native of Rochdale, and apparently a Government spy,

the disloyalty of " Father William Holt the Jesuit" is exposed, and a slur is cast upon his brother Mr. Holt of Ashworth, who is styled " one of the Earl of Barbie's men, a Romish felow and a secret Papist," and reference is made to " Midgley a godly Minister at Rachdale," who was said to be well acquainted with the proceedings and treachery of these individuals,

and apparently not indisposed to disclose what he knew ; but if Midgley's discretion and moderation were not of a somewhat different cast from those which characterised his unscrupulous eulogist, I fear that disastrous and unmerited results would follow in the experience of at least one of the brothers. That the other was implicated in Sir William Stanley's unnatural treason and met with the fate of a traitor is not unknown, but it does not appear to have been recorded that the Jesuit Holt, the active friend and unwearied coadjutor of Cardinal William Allen, belonged to the well-descended family of that name seated at Ashworth.

Link (here) to the book entilted, The Vicars of Rochdale, Volume 1 By Francis Robert Raines, Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth

The engraving is that of Cardinal William Allen

,