News From National

Fallout From Cloyne Report Continues
On Monday, July 25, the Vatican made the rare move of recalling the papal nuncio (ambassador) to Ireland amid the fallout over the Cloyne Report and the Irish prime minister’s speech in parliament deriding the Vatican. The Cloyne Report detailed allegations of clergy sexual abuse in the Cloyne archdiocese as late as 2009. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny denounced the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Voice of the Faithful Ireland leader Bryan Maguire was interviewed this past Sunday, July 24, on the Irish public radio network, RTE, show “This Week.” Host Colm O'Mongain talked with Maguire and Francis Rocca, Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service, on their reaction to Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny's recent speech in the Irish parliament about the Cloyne Report. If you would like to listen to the interview, click here.

Vatican recalls ambassador to Ireland over abuse report
http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/
20110726/NEWS0107/107260416/

Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the hierarchy of attempting to hinder a probe into allegations of child sex-abuse by priests. By Andrew Davis, Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/vatican-recalls-irish-ambassador-amid-allegations-on-sex-abuse-reporting.html

VOTF’s Child Protection and Survivor Support Group has a forum where you can comment on issues such as this http://voices.votf.org/cpss/victimsurvivors-forum/

The Cloyne Report
VOTF sent a press release to the media yesterday which quoted VOTF President, Dan Bartley as saying “Clearly Catholic bishops still do not understand how their actions put children at risk,” Dan is, of course referring to the Irish government’s release of the Cloyne Report on Catholic clergy sexual abuse.

Here is the link for VOTF Ireland’s response to the report: http://votf.org/pressrelease/press-release-for-immediate-release/17796

The report into the handling of 19 abuse allegations against clerics in a Catholic diocese in County Cork was published by the Irish Government on Wednesday. The following article contains highlights of the findings, as well as a link to the entire report. Both the monsignor and the Vatican itself come under fire.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0713/cloynetracker.html

News from VIA
In 2007, Voice of the Faithful asked U.S. bishops to discuss optional celibacy for the priesthood as a way to address some of the problems facing the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, while an increasing number of Catholics, including bishops, are re-evaluating the need for optional celibacy, there remains no coordinated, public assessment within the Church. During that same time period, the number of priests available to serve Catholic faithful has continued to decline.

Voice of the Faithful therefore now asks the Bishops of the United States to request the right to ordain married Catholic men using the same Pastoral Provision that has allowed the ordination of married Episcopalian and Anglican priests to the priesthood in the Roman Rite.

Read the report here: http://votf.org/Speech/2011_Detroit_celibacy_Ron.pdf

ACC Follow Up
If you could not attend or if you missed one of the presentations on Friday, you can still review some of the handouts and visuals available at the meeting from this page.

We also have posted photos on our VOTF Facebook page. If you are a fan of our page (and you should be) check it out. If you are not a fan, try this link to see the photos (but then go become a fan too!).

You also can order copies of the ACC speeches. Just go to the ACC home page and click the link there. Or you can go directly to the DVD/CD order form by clicking this link. Each one is well worth the effort.

If you attended either VOTF’s National Meeting or the ACC conference, please send your thoughts to share with other Vineyard readers (vineyard@votf.org). We’d love to hear from you!

Nick Ingala, VOTF’s fearless PR Director sent in the following thoughts on both VOTF’s National Meeting and the ACC:

“When you usually talk with Voice of the Faithful members on the phone or by e-mail, as I do, the medium sometimes can mask their passion for their Church and its renewal. But meeting members in person and seeing leaders in action, you can’t help but be impressed by their commitment and energy, as was abundantly clear to me during the VOTF National meeting in Detroit in June.

“During the American Catholic Council that followed, I met more faithful, dedicated Catholics, some not yet VOTF members, whose vision for the Church is an inspiration.

“For me, ACC culminated in Sr. Joan Chittister’s talk, particularly her remark that ‘the flower never sees the seed.’ We’re the seed, she said, and even though our journey is long and lonely, without us, the Church will never see renewal.”

During the fourth session of Vatican II on December 7, 1965, a joint declaration from both Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I was read simultaneously in Rome and in Istanbul, lifting the excommunication they had jointly placed on one another in 1054.

Site Seeing

Prophetic Voice

"Fr. John Celichowski of Detroit, provincial minister of the Capuchin Province of St. Joseph, spoke recently on the issue of clericalism. He described clericalism as a “form of elitism” that is “reinforced by the distinctive education and formation, dress and titles that priests and religious receive.” Elitism he said, “can lead to a distorted sense of entitlement, the assumption that one is not bound by the rules that govern everyone else, and that other people (even the vulnerable) exist to serve one's own needs.” It is only through examination of this fundamental issue and the abuse of power it generates, he said, that we can make sense of the crisis. He called for “strong and committed laity to push back” against clericalism and to demand accountability.

From National Catholic Reporter, April 22, 2011

Book Review

Unholy Communion: Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators and Priests by Hank Estrada; published by Red Rabbit Press, New Mexico, 2011.
Reviewed by Bill Casey

Our natural defenses resist hearing the details of sexual abuse, especially of children by members of the clergy. Yet those very details are what sears our hearts and souls, and what moves us to confront the scourge of child sexual abuse in our Church without blinders. Without the details, we can too easily find reasons to move around and beyond the lifelong damage that accompanies victims/survivors.

In Unholy Communion: Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators and Priests, Hank Estrada takes us through the horrors of being sexually abused in his family of origin by a trusted uncle followed by a second experience of sexual abuse by a trusted priest during his seminary training in the religious order of the Claretian Missionary Priests and Brothers. Estrada is candid not only about those who abused him but also about his own dark side that emerged as he tried to come to grips with the effects of the abuse and his own sexual orientation. 

What moved Estrada to write this book, however, was not the traumatic effects of sexual abuse. It was the Claretian Order’s continued decisions to allow the priest who abused Estrada to remain in an active ministry that involved supervision of other young men, despite assurances that the priest would not be allowed access to other vulnerable youth. When Estrada learned that another man reported being seduced during a relationship of spiritual direction by the same priest that abused the author, Estrada knew that nothing would change unless he made his own story public.

This book is worthy of a careful reading by anyone, but especially by those who have doubts about the effects of sexual abuse of vulnerable young people by members of the clergy or about the systemic pattern of enabling these same abusers to violate additional vulnerable people. The book is now available on Amazon, and you can support VOTF by ordering it through the Amazon link on the VOTF homepage (www.votf.org).

Questions, Comments?

Please send them to Siobhan Carroll, Vineyard Editor at Vineyard@votf.org. Unless otherwise indicated, I will assume comments can be published as Letters to the Editor.