On one hand you’ve got a Catholic like John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, weeping at his delivery of a commencement speech at Catholic University in Washington, District of Columbia, and it gets a lot of Lame Stream Media coverage.
LSM – thank you or your ghost writer for the invention of that one literary footnote Sarah.
John, were they, tears of omission, for all that you and your party have not done for the poor or for women as a good Catholic?
Speaking of women – ( and that Vagina thing ) – The Vatican did not fire bishops for sins of omission – covering up sins of pedophilia – (Jesus’ favorite forgivable sin) – No- this bishop down in Oz got the pink slip for openly talking about having a discussion about women as priests in the dying RC church.
CathBlog - Bishop Morris and the nourishment of the Eucharist
We've just celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday. A day when we read from John 10 where Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (John 10:11).
This week in Australia we are left puzzling over the fate of a man who has been consistently called “a great pastor” by his priests and people. I speak of Bishop (now retired) Bill Morris.
The details of Rome’s reasons for wanting his dismissal are not known. What is known is that other bishops and cardinals who protected paedophiles were not asked to resign/retire, while Bishop Morris was. Such skewed decision-making is perplexing at best and in many eyes scandalous.
At the heart of Bishop Morris’ concern lay the Eucharist and the long Catholic value of being a Eucharistic community nourished by the Word and the Table. Across Australia, such Eucharistic nourishment is becoming less and less possible.
…Parishes are joining up, placing impossible demands on a single priest to be the sole pastor for one conglomerate parish where there were once two or three or four. Dioceses are importing pastors from India, Vietnam, Africa, Poland and unfortunately many of these men lack the cultural awareness to genuinely pastor Australian Parishes. In one Parish, when the new priest arrived, the pastoral council was immediately dismissed.
Toowoomba's sacked bishop is not alone in calling for debate on women
Pope Benedict's decision this month to dismiss William "Bill" Martin Morris, bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba, 190,000 square miles of bush inland from Brisbane, was a really, really sad one. Morris was accused of calling for an open debate on the ordination of women and the extension of married clergy to the whole church. In his Advent pastoral letter in 2006 he had indeed called for such debates and added that there should be similar discussion about Catholics accepting Anglican and Lutheran orders and those of the Uniting Church, a grouping of Australian Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Methodists.
It is an open secret that there is a crescendo of debate about such questions in the Catholic world. The precedents for such action are well known. There are thousands of married priests in Catholicism's eastern rites, all living – doubtless happily – with their spouses in complete harmony with Rome. Such has been the case for perhaps two millennia. And as far as female clergy are concerned, the consecration of various women to holy orders during the Stalinist dictatorship under which Czechoslovakia lived following the second world war, while never officially publicised, has never been declared invalid by the Vatican. And, leaving Czechoslovakians aside for a moment, wasn't Mary Magdalene some sort of heroine in the church's earliest days?
We all know Bishop Morris meant well but “actum de vagina pars illa arcte vetabat” - discussion about that (thing) is strictly forbidden.
Will the last few decent catholics left in the church just shut the F-up while the other bishops, the sons of Borgia, go on with their holy work?
Enjoy your retirement Bill. You, in a very good Christian sense, have earned it mate.
