Author: Richard Chonak

Msgr. Michael Foster vindicated, resumes post
Former altar boy says Law told him to keep abuse quiet
If this one’s true, it’s over for the Cardinal.
Judge: Church risks contempt charges for withholding psych records

Sal posts a letter below from someone considering becoming Catholic.
That letter reminds me how I had to puzzle about a certain question, somewhere along the way in the process of my conversion, namely:
Is it plausible that God has chosen to work this way, to reach humanity this way: through a real, visible community, a hierarchically-ordered community; through sacraments that involve human actions and real objects; through defined dogmas, church councils, and canonified scripture?
You’ll notice I said “plausible”, not “proven”. There are plenty of Christian doctrines that can’t be proven from prior knowledge, starting with the Trinity and the Incarnation. Why would the nature of the Church be any different?
At the time, the best I could say was — and remains: such a Church is like the Incarnation writ large. It is a visible, tangible presence of Christ in the world today, where the Word took flesh 2000 years ago, and where practically everything takes on flesh now: the washing of sin uses real water, prayer is represented with incense and kneeling, and the invisible realities of Heaven become visible through the statues and the icons. Even Jesus continues to be, in a sense, concretely present to us in our neighbor and our brother: sometimes the big brother who helps us, and sometimes the poor and little brother needing good from us; present in the one spouse bonded with the other; audible in the teachers and pastors who are ordained to bring us the Gospel (“he who hears you hears me”).
And I said, Yes, it’s plausible, it’s credible that God would work this way. We already know that He likes to work through matter: He invented it. In the Incarnation, He became it.
So here’s the Church with her weaknesses and limitations, and failures. Also in His earthly life, our Lord subjected Himself to having weakness and limitation, and even failures in a sense, for not everyone recognized Him.

AP reports:

Lowell, Mass. — Alleged victims of the Rev. Joseph Birmingham said they hoped a meeting with Cardinal Bernard Law would bring home to the prelate the depth of the clergy abuse scandal.
Law met behind closed doors with about 100 people, including about 20 victims and their relatives, Tuesday night. Those in attendance said Law apologized and asked for forgiveness.
“It was a very emotional meeting. There was not a dry eye in the room,” Bernie McDaid said. “I think he’s beginning to see the immensity of this and how much damage it really has caused.”
Fifty-four people have sued the Boston Archdiocese claiming they were abused by Birmingham starting in 1962. Birmingham died in 1989.
McDaid said the meeting was “only the beginning.”
“He has to come out and address the people. There’s no other way of healing,” McDaid said.
Added Gary Bergeron: “It’s a start. This is just a first step in a long process. It shouldn’t have taken this long. I do give him credit for being here.”
The lawsuits, some of which name Law as a defendant, allege that after parents raised concerns about Birmingham, church officials moved him among different parishes. Birmingham served at parishes in Lowell, Sudbury, Salem, Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, Gloucester and Lexington.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey said the archdiocese won’t discuss Law’s meetings with victims.
Victims said that despite the ongoing litigation, the 2.5-hour meeting was an open, question-and-answer session, with no ground rules.
“The lawsuit is about the past, the meeting tonight is about the future … it’s about where do we go from here,” said Olan Horne, a spokesman for a support group for alleged victims of Birmingham.
Participants also hoped the meeting would help the parents of victims, many of whom have had difficulty accepting the damage done to their children, said Bergeron, a support group member.
“One of our main goals here is to get some healing for the parents,” Bergeron said.
About six victims have already met with Law in one-on-one sessions since July, said Bergeron, who also met privately with Law.
Tuesday’s meeting was organized as an attempt to bring Law to the site of Birmingham’s alleged abuse. The support group is currently in talks with the archdiocese about having other meetings, and its goal if to have Law visit all the parishes where Birmingham allegedly abused children.
In a related development, both the archdiocese and leaders of the Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful said a Tuesday meeting between leaders of the two was “cordial and productive,” and may lead to a meeting between the group and Law. Previously, relations between the group and the archdiocese have been strained.

If you’ve ever taken a basic academic course on Scripture, you’ve probably heard of the “documentary hypothesis” that identifies four different “authors” (or groups of authors) for the Torah. It arises from the application of literary-philological analysis techniques to the ancient text.
At Sheffield University, some author proposes his own Documentary Hypothesis on another well-known body of literature in a paper called New Directions in Pooh Studies:

the dogma of unitary authorship for works of literature must be totally abandoned. In all confidence we may say that a priori we may expect the Pooh corpus (viz. Winnie-the-Pooh, hereafter abbreviated W, containing traditions of higher antiquity than the Deutero-Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, hereafter abbreviated H) to be of composite origin; even if there were such a person as A.A. Milne, traditionally the ‘author’, we may be sure that he did not write the Pooh books….

Canonist Rev. Kenneth Kaucheck of the “Detroit Four” case has apologized to his parish for a previous statement and reaffirmed that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect human life at all its stages. Kudos to Fr. Kaucheck for doing the right thing.