15 January 2008
Sr. Louise Lears Appears as Summoned Today
St. Louis Catholic learned, from observers on the street, that Sr. Lears appeared at the Chancery today as per her summons. She was attended by her canon lawyer and about ten other people, who awaited her outside of the room. After an hour, she departed. At this point I cannot report on the substance of the hearing.
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11 comments:
God Bless Sr. Louise!
Yes, God bless her-- with the graces necessary for repentance and to be reconciled with her Bishop. Now that would be a blessing most beneficial to her and the Church.
I think God has blessed her by giving her an Archbishop who cares enough about the state of her soul that he is willing to call her to repent of her public dissent from the teachings of Christ.
St. Cronan's is getting funnier and funnier.Today's website (1/16/08)purportedly expressing the life of a parish in the Catholic Church, features a biography of athiest bi-sexual Susan Sontag! Now there's a Saint for you. Susan Sontag! Susan was proud of her abortions and became famous in her early career for writing "the white race is the cancer of history".
The wikipedia bio by the way is riddled with errors. Her book "Trip to Hanoi" lionized the Vietnamese Communist government. She did not decry it.
Even as lefties the Cronan crowd leave a lot to be desired.
When I read the comments on here, it makes me sick to my very soul. Ms. McGrath and Sr. Lears were my spiritual mentors into the Catholic Church. Sadly, I think they are mistaken that the Church is a loving, caring entity devoted to all of the best virtues of the world.
I will remain a Christian, but I will leave the Catholic Church. Does anyone know how I can do this officially (rather than just leaving like so many millions of people have already done)?
rc for one year,
I remember that you wrote here in support of McGrath and Hudson during the initial scandal of the women's pretend ordinations. I tried to explain the reasons for the Archbishop's actions and the impossibility of the ordination in a charitable manner.
I mention this because I mean the following in charity, with concern for your soul:
The kind of "Catholicism" that says that Jesus did not mandate the ordination of men only, and that it is okay to disobey the orders of one's bishop, is not Catholicism. "Where the Bishop is, there is the Catholic Church," says Ignatius of Antioch.
The Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Without being in union with Peter and his successors, one cuts oneself off from the Church.
I seriously recommend that you seek a faithful priest for spiritual guidance, read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and pray for grace to know the Catholic faith. Then you can decide to accept it or leave it based upon reality instead of the semi-truths you may have been given.
Your confusion is a good example of why the Archbishop's actions are those of a loving and wise shepherd who seeks to guard his flock from confusion by those who would harm the Church.
God bless.
To RC For One Year
I do pray that none of my comments have induced you to leave the Church. Despite all the controversy I do believe that the leaders of St. Cronan's (Fr. Kleba especially) have done much that is holy and good.
But please remember the Church is all of us and one must never identify it with one tendancy or passion whether it be a passion for social justice or a better liturgy.
And one must never identify it with a particular mentor or spiritual advisor.
I know whereof I speak.
I have a sister-in-law who was brought to the Faith by a priest who is now de-frocked for pedophilia.
But she is still strong in the Faith because the Faith is bigger than all of us. The Church is there with Her Truth whether we want to accept Her Truth or not.
My point is The Faith is larger than St. Cronan's (or my Parish) or any of the various causes which surround those parishes. The Church is a Lady whose universality is made concrete and real in the Pope and the Bishops.
Catholicism, or Catholicity means thinking as one with all the Bishops and all the Popes AND all the Catholics who have ever lived in the timeless "Communion of Saints". That's a tall order but it is one of the things one must do to be Catholic.
My point is that going into a synagogue and getting "ordained" by a so-called Bishop in the company of a well known abortion supporter and a known schismatic just isn't Catholic. It's I don't know, something else. It's not thinking with the Church as it has been and will always be.
Here is something I tell those who wish to leave the Faith.
Are you sure you wanted something from the Faith it couldn't give?
I may stand corrected but I think Christ only promised two things with regards to his Church. One, that it would survive. The other is that it would never fail to tell the Truth. I don't think he ever said it would be kind or decent or warm.
It should be if we follow Christ's precepts. But there is no promise that it must be.
My hope is that you will look to the Church as a source of Truth and not a source of decency or kindness. The Church is an inheritor of Original Sin too and you won't always find decency or kindness there. But you will find the Truth.
Love the Church for Her Truth and not her passions. Then your Faith will survive everything.
EVEN BLOGS.
God Bless You.
When you say Truth, would that be the Truth the church showed by letting priests who were abusing women and children in their parishes continue to serve in similar capacities but 'hid' them in new parishes? Or the Truth that was there when the Church abetted the Nazis? Or the Truth that was there when a group of 'radical' cardinals rigged the vote to make the Pope infallible?
Repeatedly, in the Gospels, Jesus has to correct his followers and show them where they are wrong... don't build a tent for me on the mountain... don't ignore people because they are poor or leperous... don't malign the Magdalene.
I believe the Catholic Church is a beautiful, wonderful Church that is, in fact, being destroyed by the more human and less Christ-like elements within it.
Your form of Christianity is easy...follow these rules, obey these leaders and you will get saved. Others who, instead, try to emulate Christ as much as their soul and their prayer and their God tells them to have a much harder row to hoe...and they aren't even doing it to assure their place in the kingdom of heaven.
I am not confused. I have never been more certain that I have seen people who have been touched by God and are acting on that. From the moment I walked into Saint Cronan's, I felt the presence of God...beautifully, palpably, in a way that challenged evey fiber of my being prior to that.
If wanting to give of myself to the poor even more is wrong, if wanting to rid myself of worldly possessions and desires is a sin, if wanting to see everyone come to Christ is blasphemy, then let me walk through the Gates that come my way.
You have put too much of your passion and belief and thought into the system and the people within it and not enough into God and his only true son Jesus Christ.
God Bless You.
RC for one year-- I allowed your post immediately above even though it contains the oft-repeated, yet oft-conclusively refuted, smear that the Church aided and abetted the Nazis. And I allowed your rather presumptuous and unsuppported claim that "radical" bishops "rigged" the vote to "make" the Pope infallible.
The reason for this is that I thought it would be instructive to show those reading this just exactly the kind the "Catholic faith" your friends, the excommunicated McGrath and Hudson, have imparted to you. Some mentors. This may be why you have some problems with the Church-- you don't have knowledge of it.
All the more do I ask readers to pray for you.
And as for the comment of my "version" of the faith being easy--right. The sacrifices called for by Christ of the faithful Catholic are significant. They are salvific, a share in Christ's own sufferings. I won't belabor the point, but is it easier to contracept and raise one, two or no children, or is it easier to raise eight? Is it easier for one with a sinful tendency to give into it, or to live chastely?
But all this won't convince you, I'm sure. You were right in one sense, though. All of the "burdens" of faithfulness are easy, in the sense that they bring an abiding peace and joy, for Christ's yoke is easy and his burden is light.
TO RC FOR ONE YEAR:
I've read your reply and given it some thought.
When you mention the abuse scandal (please note that I did too because it touched my family), when you mention the abuse scandal you are getting at a worthy philosophical dilemma.
Sometimes the truth of the Catholic Faith can be apparent and present and men are still evil enough to turn their backs on it.
I refer to the Bishops who cozzened and hid that evil sexual behavior.
Still it doesn't really touch what I am getting at. I'm saying that despite the fact that men turn away from it ever more, there IS a system of revealed truth called the Roman Catholic Faith. This Faith, this Truth exists in a whole form and it is made up of Tradition, Scripture and Natural Reason. It is also all of us.
When we give ourselves to it we are not giving ourselves to anything which particularly satisfies our desire for a better world or justice. We are giving ourselves to something that might result in a better world and justice if we pursue it all together. But there is no real assurance that the "Kingdom of God" will come in our lifetime. .
You emphasize Jesus first and feel you and your community have a personal relationship which is so direct and loving that you may be in a position to correct the Church much as CHrist did. NOt impossible. NOt a rediculous claim. Still you must examine where this view is really coming from. You must submit it to the scrutinies of the whole Church and her thinking as it has always been. (Many of the Great Saints found themselves having to do this.)
What you have to submit your feelings and views and criticisms to is the whole Catholic Church.
You have to submit it to that thing which is composed of Tradition, Scripture, Natural Law, the Sacraments. Why? Because that thing composed of Tradition, Scripture, Natural Law and the Sacraments IS Jesus and there is really no other way to find him.
That thing, that Church is present in a special form in Archbishop Raymond BUrke. I suspect Sr. Lears will discover this soon.
I offer this admission. I'm not much for emotion and I really don't believe you can see or palpably find Jesus in other people, or a small Faith community, except through a glass darkly. I know well the "high" of discovering a crew of virtuous souls out to right wrongs. It's so easy to see them as the twelve disciples (Mary Magdalene included) "beamed down".
However, I've got to say in my brief 56 years as a Catholic, whenever I've met a community like that I finally discovered that I was practicing a subtle form of idolatry. I was idolizing THEM or the COMMUNITY and worshiping God.
The fact is that you do often see Jesus in other people but he is often in bad people as well as good and that's the mystery of it.
IF you have only been a Catholic for one year you might want to think about the differneces between the protestant denomination you may have grown up in and the Catholic view of a CHurch.
It is a valid and historically consistent view of Protestants that Jesus can be encountered directly through Scripture and a small community which makes a heirarchy less relevant.
Our view is different as the Holy Father made clear in a recent statement widely interpreted to mean the "Protestants don't have CHurches".
He pretty much did say that and it's relevant to you now. In the Catholic view the Church is that order of Popes and Bishops, priests and lesser clergy followed by the faithful. That order is in theory also an order of truth.
The palpable feelings you have when you enter St. Cronan's may be a genuine encounter with the CHurch.
Here's the irony. When Sister LEars met with His Grace that was no less, nay maybe even a greater encounter with CHrist.
Will she be able to recognize it?
God Bless you and please do soldier on. The Catholic Church is just awful. And you really don't want to be anywhere else.
I have been reading BOTH sides of the bloggings etc and it seems that BOTH sides are very passionate about what you each believe in. Like our Congress of Democrats and Republicans--both believe they are right and therefore little comes of it except stalemate..our hearts need to be circumcised...the ground is hardened for new plantings to ever give seed...Come Holy Spirit, melt frozen and warm the chill..
Jesus weeps for ALL who post here.
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