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St Mary’s Festival (and Francis) featured in Phila Inquirer: The Feast of the Assumption Festival is front and center on page B-1 of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer with great photos from staff photographer Akira Suwa. Captions: “Sunday was a day of summer fun at the 87th annual Feast of the Assumption Carnival at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in Malaga, Franklin Township. Top, Francis Heiland, 4, of Hammonton, splashes down a water slide. Above, the train ride was a popular attraction. Bottom: Colleen Bingam and Andrew Pron of Cape May carry their midway prizes. The carnival also featured a chicken barbecue and musical performances, and the day was to be capped off with a fireworks display.

Here’s how it looked on the page spread:

A more complicated scandal that reverses some of the standard good guy/bad guy assumptions.

Clergy sexual abuse is taking place across the theological spectrum. Yes, there was a spike in abuse of children, but especially teen-aged boys, soon after Vatican II and that may have had something to do with the fact that many priests left to get married, contributing to the creation of what insiders have called a gay subculture in seminaries. And, yes, the whole liberated atmosphere of the ’60s and ’70s may have played a role. But those realities hid the larger truth, he said. There were conservative Catholics with dark secrets to hide and they were especially open to blackmail threats. There was also an incentive to enthusiastically preach conservatism, in an era of conservative leaders, while living a secret life that contradicted one’s sermons.

In the NYTimes:

Nowhere in the letter did Benedict address the responsibility of the Vatican itself. Many victims’ groups have criticized the Vatican for not recognizing the depth and scope of the abuse crisis sooner. Nor did he use the term punishment, or spell out any consequences for clergy or bishops who had not upheld canon or civil law. Indeed, he laid blame firmly with Irish Catholic leaders.

It’s hard to believe anyone’s sorry and anything’s changed while people like Boston’s former Cardinal Law are given cushy jobs in Rome. How many people have lost their faith? And how many churches have been sold off to cover the lawsuits and settlements? Hasn’t the Vatican learned anything?

I carried that lesson back to my own life and parish. It’s all too easy for us Americans to switch jobs, switch neighborhoods, heck, even switch spouses when things aren’t going our way. I learned…

A new website opposed to Diocesan church-and-school closures. From their description:

A Group dedicated to ensuring that quality Catholic school education is available to Cape May County families, and endeavoring to save Wildwood Catholic and its traditions for the children.

They have two Facebook groups: SaveWildwoodCatholic and Keep Wildwood Catholic High School Alive. Here’s some pictures from a recent rally:

From Chuck’s post:

It isn’t that I’ve turned against “nurturing,” or what the term is supposed to evoke. It’s rather that the word has become like the tires on my car: they’ve gone round and round so many thousands of times the tread is worn off and they won’t hold to the road anymore.

My reply to Chuck:

The vagueness of it all seems usually to be the point. We want to sound deep and spiritual without really laying out what we believe or what spirit we’re actually talking about (I was a bit more rantery about the subject when I wrote that about Sodium Free Friends and followed up that we need a testimony against community). I saw with some amusement when my former employer spent hundreds of people hours to craft the most banal “nurture”-filled mission statement possible–there was a good use of time and funds. It’s not limited to Friends of course. My wife is fighting the good fight against banality in the Catholic Church, where “vibrant” has become the leading cliche among the bureaucrats. The rising tide of mediocrity is everywhere it seems.

Have you ever seen the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator? It’d be fun to write one of these for Friends. The trouble is, people would probably start using it!

From Lizopp, talk about Lloyd Lee Wilson’s notion of “the Quaker gestalt”:

I would say in my earlier days among Friends, I yanked the “Quakerism is a part of Christianity” thread pretty hard, insisting that Quakerism could exist just fine without it being Christian. In hindsight, that was my way of saying I felt I belonged and was accepted by my local Quaker community, and it therefore followed that a belief Jesus didn’t have to be a requirement for being Quaker. Nowadays, as a more mature Friend, others have held my feet to the fire, saying that to be Quaker, I have to at least be willing to wrestle with the faith’s Christian roots. And I do.

My comment: I always thought LLW’s use of “gestalt” was a odd word choice but a very useful concept.

I end up at Catholic mass a lot these days. I’m in no danger of converting but I do appreciate a certain unity between the theology and form (not necessarily the actual practice) and I find myself get agitated when I see someone do something that shows disregard for the symbolism in the Catholic gestalt.

When we find another religious path interesting, or talk about a “golden age” in our own tradition’s past, I think we’re talking about a moment when the faith and outward practiced balanced in a complementary way—at least from our perspectiv.

I’m reading John Wilbur these days. Interesting to see him describe the problems with nascent Gurneyism. A lot of the worries he’s cataloging aren’t really all that serious, things like speakers that are a bit too charismatic, meetinghouses a bit too grand, too much or little emphasis on particular Quaker teachings. But I think he’s saw them as an imbalance of the Quaker gestalt that would quickly bring along major changes. When you think of faith and practice as a balance you can peer into the future sometimes.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh should be ashamed of itself, plans to sell of very historic church to billboard company. This is the same church they tried to sell to jailed conman Raffaello Follieri, friend of Camden’s Bishop Galante.

Lamar plans to buy historic St. Nicholas Church in Troy Hill

Yes, this is a real pitch by the Diocese of Brooklyn. Does Bishop DiMarzio really think this will bring the youngsters into the Catholic Church? This is brought to you by the same Los Angeles ad agency that uses the devil to promote Catholic television:

The campaign [for NET, the Diocese’s cable TV channel], by Cesario Migliozzi in Los Angeles, features an unusual spokesman for religious television: the Devil. “We could have easily said, ‘Net is the network you’ve been praying for,’ but we need to get eyeballs,” said Michael Migliozzi, partner and creative director at Cesario Migliozzi. “The idea of having a little devil telling you not to do it would be a lot of fun.”

The Times reports that the”fun” devil ad cost the Diocese of Brooklyn about $200,000. “Father Vic,” who we’d guess is an under-employed L.A. actor, must have lightened the collection plates of a few more hundred thousand dollars.

In totally unrelated news, the Diocese of Brooklyn recently announced the closings of over a dozen schools as part of it’s “Preserving the Vision” campaign (where do they come up with these names?), citing budget deficits that approached a million dollars a year. Getting out the calculator, the average shuttered school would be responsible for $70,000 in annual deficit. Two $200,000 ads represents 5.7 closed schools and thousands of students.

Ah, but “Father Vic” is pretty darn cute, don’t you agree? I bet he got a lot of “View Again” clicks in the Rectory offices.

HT to Scott Wells

My wife Julie on her Catholic blog: Lest we wonder, where are the “younger people”

“The cloud of speculation over Martino’s future first appeared in June after the 63 year-old prelate was spotted in Rome, where, according to multiple reports, he met with officials at the Congregation for Bishops after the dicastery’s intervention was sought.”

Nathan Schneider writes in the NYTimes:

Modern arguments and evangelists and New Atheists have duped us into thinking that the interesting question is whether God exists; no, what mattered for Anselm was how we think about God and about one another.

The answer I found in his proof is no answer at all, no truly abstract, autonomous assurance that I can have all to myself. I have to stitch it out of memories, hopes and loved ones, as he did. It is no self-thinking thought; it’s a pleasure built out of language and sharing.

Italian Tribune: ‘Labor of Love’ in 1922, St. Mary’s Slated for Closing.

My wife’s Julie’s church was a feature article in the Italian Tribune. I pretty sure the pictures come from the Save St Mary’s campaign and it’s Diocese of Camden watchdog site (eagle-eyed fans will spot Theo at the bottom!).

No one has a devotion to the Catholic faith like Italians. When the first immigrants came to the United States, they brought with them their religious dedication. Churches were built by Italians so they could have their own parishes where they could congregate and worship as a group. St. Mary’s Church in Malaga, New Jersey is one of these churches, built by its devoted Italian founders. However, Bishop Joseph Galante of Camden Diocese wants to close the church, and parishioners are trying to keep it open.

Like so much else in the slow economy, a regional Catholic high school for Gloucester County is going to have to wait. “The project is on hold because of the recession,” said Andrew Walton, spokesman…

Quakers and Calvinism have had a long and difficult relationship. The Quakers appeared in England during the difficulties between the Puritans, the Anglicans, and the Roman Catholics, and as each group struggled for political ascendancy, the Quakers ended up being persecuted by each in turn. The Quakers killed in Boston in the 1650s were done in in the name of Calvinist Christianity. Today, many of the disputes seem dated, but not all, of course.