An Out-of-Touch Ogre?

The media’s mau-mauing of Bishop Thomas Olmsted
By George Neumayr | July 2010
Catholic World Report

In the past, bishops sparked shocked headlines in newspapers by betraying Church teaching. Now a brave few make headlines by upholding it. Consider the case of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has likened him to a member of the hierarchy during the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.”

That sounds pretty bad. What, exactly, has Olmsted done? Shown corrupt indifference to the protection of children? Profited off the abuse of them? No, it turns out his cruel sin in the eyes of Kristof and company is that he wants to protect children, including the forgotten unborn ones often killed under the worldly logic of false compassion.

In May, it came out that Bishop Olmsted had upheld canon law after learning, to his alarm, that a nun at a Catholic hospital in the diocese of Phoenix, several months earlier, formally cooperated in the killing of an unborn child from a patient’s difficult pregnancy.

Olmsted had quietly, conscientiously, and properly followed Church teaching and discipline in the matter (under canon law, Mercy Sister Margaret McBride incurred “automatic excommunication” through her action; he simply informed her of that, and she lost her executive position at the hospital).

But the media, hungry for stories that pit “progressive” nuns against “reactionary” bishops, publicized it, at which point Olmsted issued a laudably straightforward comment:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

Every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life at all its stages; from conception to natural death. This obligation is also placed upon every Catholic individual. If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action. The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty….

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, where the abortion took place, also made a statement, though considerably more vague, saying that in “this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” and that its “ethics” committee signed off on it.

Just the “termination of an 11-week pregnancy”? No, an unborn child was terminated too. But it is easier to say a “pregnancy” was terminated than an innocent unborn child suctioned to death. Showing no interest in that victim, the media’s ensuing coverage cast Sister McBride as the big-hearted “saintly” nun and Bishop Olmsted as the out-of-touch ogre.

Yet he is the only figure in the controversy in touch with what actually happened: an unborn child was killed at a Catholic hospital with a nun’s formal cooperation and help, and he is not about to let that happen again. At a time when derelict bishops are justly criticized for ignoring canon law to the detriment of children, the media’s treatment of the conscientious Bishop Olmsted looks even more outrageous and perverse.

It always comes as a rude surprise to the media these days when an American bishop turns out to be a believing Catholic and displays a willingness to govern his diocese according to Church norms. The Fifth-Column newspaper National Catholic Reporter finds his conduct very puzzling indeed, breaking the news, through one troubled source, that Olmsted is “very much governed by canon law and obedience and fidelity to church teaching and the magisterium….” How odd. This makes him, in NCR’s telling, a “strict constructionist” and a backwoods simpleton. “It helps to know that he grew up on a Kansas farm near the Nebraska border and attended a one-room rural school,” observed another of the paper’s sources.

But, wait, Olmsted is also like a pampered Borgia-era bishop. One of Nicholas Kristof’s sources hissed, “True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

It apparently doesn’t occur to commentators like Kristof that the very modernist scorn of canon law they demand from Olmsted is what got decadent bishops into the abuse scandal and exposure of children to harm, both spiritual and physical, in the first place. Kristof speaks of the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance” while oblivious to the cruel and debauched days of modern liberalism. Both came through the infidelity of soft and corrupt bishops to canon law and orthodox teaching.

Olmsted, needless to say, is the antithesis of a Borgia-era bishop. He has risked his comfort for the sake of thankless duty. He deserves praise for resisting the media’s mau-mauing and the Catholic left’s claimed monopoly on “compassion,” which never extends to the unborn child torn limb from limb.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report.

Roman Catholic bishop stabbed to death in Turkey

By SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser

Via Yahoo News

ANKARA, Turkey – A Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southern Turkey on Thursday, a day before he was scheduled to leave for Cyprus to meet with the pope, officials and reports said.

Luigi Padovese, 63, the apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun. The killing was not believed to be politically motivated.

Dogan news agency video footage of the scene showed the bishop lying dead in front of a building.

Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz, the governor for the province of Hatay, said police immediately caught the suspected killer. He said the man, identified only as Murat A., was Padovese's driver for the last four and a half years and was mentally unstable.

"The initial investigation shows that the incident is not politically motivated," Lekesiz said. "We have learned that the suspect had psychological problems and was receiving treatment."

Padovese, who is the equivalent of the bishop for the Anatolia region, was scheduled to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet with the pope, who is visiting the island, and fellow bishops from around the region to prepare for a synod of Roman Catholic bishops in the Middle East. The synod is scheduled for October.

The Vatican-affiliated Asia News agency cited unnamed witnesses as saying the driver appeared to be "depressed, violent and threatening," in recent days.

No one answered phones at his church in Iskenderun.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told The Associated Press in Rome that the Vatican felt "immense pain, consternation, (and) bewilderment" over the death and noted that it showed the "difficult conditions" of the Catholic community in the region.

He said the pope's upcoming visit to Cyprus and the upcoming synod of bishops on the Middle East showed "how the universal church is in solidarity with this community."

The killing is the latest in a string of attacks in recent years on Christians in Turkey, where Christians make up less than 1 percent of the 70 million population.

In 2007, a Roman Catholic priest in the western city of Izmir, Adriano Franchini, was stabbed and slightly wounded in the stomach by a 19-year-old man after Sunday Mass. The man was arrested.

The same year, a group of men entered a Bible-publishing house in the central Anatolian city of Malatya and killed three Christians, including a German national. The five alleged killers are now standing trial for murder.

The killings — in which the victims were tied up and had their throats slit — drew international condemnation and added to Western concerns about whether Turkey can protect its religious minorities.

In 2006, amid widespread anger in Islamic countries over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a 16-year-old boy shot dead a Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. The boy was convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Padovese was appointed to his post in 2004.

Mustafa Sinanoglu, the mufti or top Muslim cleric for Hatay province, told the Anatolia news agency that he and Padovese had been working together toward establishing closer dialogue between their faiths.

"I have been deeply affected by the death of a colleague with whom I had been working together on projects for the region, Turkey and world peace," he said.

"These kinds of incidents are damaging our country's image," he added.

Asia News said the Bishop was also involved in work for the unity of the Christian church and to revive the tiny Christian community in Turkey.

Turkey's Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay paid tribute to Padovese saying he had "made important contributions to the culture of tolerance through his services in Hatay."

The Foreign Ministry said the death of Padovese was an "important loss from a religious and scholarly point of view," adding that the Bishop had written extensively on Turkey.

In a 2006 telephone interview with the AP, following another knife attack that injured another priest, Padovese expressed concern over the safety of Catholics priests in Turkey.

"The climate has changed," he said. "It is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."

New Prague Bishop Endured Communist Prison

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, FEB. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- A bishop who was forced to work in a factory instead of as a priest, and who endured time in a Communist prison, has been named the archbishop of Prague.

Bishop Dominik Duka of Hradec Kralove, 66, succeeds Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, 77, who has retired for reasons of age.

Dominik Duka was born in 1943. He entered the Dominican Order, making his temporary profession in 1969, and receiving priestly ordination the next year.

For five years he worked in several parishes in Prague, and made his perpetual vows in 1972.

Three years later, he was deprived of authorization to exercise his priestly ministry, and was forced to work in a car factory in Plzen for almost 15 years (until 1989).

Meanwhile, he worked in secret within his congregation as master of novices and professor of theology.

He was imprisoned in Plzen between 1981 and 1982, according to the biography issued by the Vatican press office.

After the fall of Communism, he was elected president of the Federal Conference of Major Superiors and, from 1992 to 1996 was vice-president of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors.

From 1990 to 1999 he was a professor in the faculty of theology of Palacky University in Olomouc. On June 6, 1998, Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of Hradec Kralove.

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-28359?l=english

Nicaraguan Bishop Warns of Possible Dictatorship

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, OCT. 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The vice-president of the Nicaraguan bishops' conference is stating that a recent Supreme Court decision could pave the way for President Daniel Ortega to take the role of a dictator.

Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata of Esteli affirmed this after the Supreme Court decided Monday to allow the re-election of the president in 2011, even though he is already serving his second five-year term.

The prelate asserted that "the sad reality is that for those in power the constitution is toilet paper."

The bishop expressed his opinion that "if Ortega is re-elected, dictatorship will be established" and there will be trouble for anyone "who opposes his interests."

He noted, however, that "on a juridical level President Ortega hasn't achieved anything because what they have done is tainted."

On Oct. 15, Ortega moved to declare an article impeding consecutive presidential re-election as unconstitutional.

This article, which limits the president to two consecutive terms, was judged "inapplicable" by the court on Monday.

Politicians and businessmen opposed to Ortega announced Wednesday that they will attempt to obtain the annulment of the court's decision which, according to Ortega, "is already engraved in stone."

http://www.zenit.org/article-27301?l=english

US Bishops: Heath Package Still Funding Abortions

Urge Congress to Keep Working

WASHINGTON, D.C., OCT. 9, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops are expressing dismay that current bills in the health care reform debate still have Americans paying for abortions with their taxes.

In a letter Thursday, three officials from the episcopal conference reiterated three criteria that the bishops want to see protected in health care reform.

Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development; Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities; and Bishop John Wester, chairman of the Committee on Migration, signed the note.

They called on Congress to: "Exclude mandated coverage for abortion, and incorporate longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights. [...] It is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new program longstanding and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and protections for rights of conscience."

"No current bill meets this test," the bishops affirmed.

Furthermore, the letter asks Congress to make "quality health care affordable and accessible to everyone, particularly those who are vulnerable and those who live at or near the poverty level."

Finally, the statement encourages "effective measures to safeguard the health of immigrants, their children and all of society."

The bishops expressed hope that legislation could meet the criteria set by Catholic social teaching.

"However," they wrote, "we remain apprehensive when amendments protecting freedom of conscience and ensuring no taxpayer money for abortion are defeated in committee votes."

Sifting the jargon

E. Christian Brugger, a senior fellow in ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation, published an essay that gives a careful analysis of the bills and laws in question.

He noted that President Barack Obama himself made a false statement to Congress on Sept. 9 when he said, "[U]nder our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

The falsity of the statement, Brugger explained, "is cleverly disguised."

At the end of his analysis, the ethicist concludes: "[A]bortion will be available for federal funding under both the private option and the government subsidized exchange options.

"Presently, because of the Hyde Amendment, only abortions in extreme situations -- e.g., rape, incest, threat to the life of the mother -- can be federally funded.

"If HR 3200 and its counterpart in the Senate are voted into law, the federal government, with our money, will go from funding a very small number of abortions annually to funding almost all our country's annual abortions."

--- --- ---

On the Net:

Bishops' letter to Congress: www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/2009-10-08-healthcare-letter-congress.pdf

E. Christian Brugger's essay: www.culture-of-life.org

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-27134?l=english

Augustinian Bishop Dies in China

Began Mission Before Communism

ROME, SEPT. 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Bishop Nicholas Shi Jin Xian, 88, died Wednesday in Shangqui, the last of the Augustinian Recollects to have worked in China before the take-over of Communism.

According to a statement from his order, it was Bishop Shi who "after decades of persecution and isolation, restored religious life in his diocese, and the Catholic Church's relations with the civil authorities."

Nicholas Shi was born in 1921, just three years before the Order of Augustinian Recollects arrived at the Henan Mission (present-day Shangqiu).

He entered the Augustinian minor seminary in his native municipality, and made his profession Jan. 16, 1940. After studying philosophy and theology, he was ordained a priest on July 29, 1948.

Shortly after Father Shi's ordination, Spanish religious were expelled from China and native religious were dispersed or sent to concentration camps. His mission was thus closed.

Father Shi was soon after appointed episcopal vicar, until he was finally prohibited from exercising any pastoral action.

He first became an oculist, but later was consigned for three years to a brick factory to be "re-educated." He was imprisoned for two years and lived in miserable conditions suffering the public contempt of the authorities.

However, behind closed doors, he did not cease his pastoral work, undertaking constant visits to Christian homes and leading underground liturgical celebrations. His human qualities were appreciated even by those who guarded him.

Deng Xiao Ping's coming to power and the 1979 Cultural Revolution enabled the priest to get a "rehabilitation letter." He was assigned to teach English, a job he held until his retirement.

Soon after, he managed to contact the Augustinian Recollects through letters written to addresses in Manila he had memorized as a young man. The contact was unexpected on both sides: Father Shi was not sure if the order still existed, having been told during his psychological torture that it was gone; the Augustinians themselves did not know if any Chinese religious were still alive.

Re-building

Retired from his teaching tasks, he returned to Shangqui in 1980 to dedicate himself solely to pastoral work. He succeeded in having the civil authorities return to the Church all the goods they had confiscated since 1948. He re-opened the parish and contacted some of the Augustinian religious who were still in China after the dispersion. He also began to receive visits from foreign religious, once permission was granted for travel within China.

For years he engaged in negotiations with civil authorities, eventually gaining permission to have communities of religious in his diocese. In 1991, he was made bishop.

"Nicholas Shi deserves a place of honor in the history of the Order and in the Catholic Church in China," the Augustinian statement affirmed. "His humility, discretion, ability to react and prudence led him to maintain a tense but respectful relationship with the authorities. His figure attracted many of his compatriots to Catholicism and the religious life.

"He was a person of profound spiritual life, deep faith and uncommon intelligence. Never having lived outside of China, he wrote in Latin, English and Spanish, and was able to translate official texts. When he made contact with the first Spanish religious, after almost 40 years without speaking, hearing or reading a word of Spanish, he had no problem writing letters and reports in this language with an astounding perfection."

"His love for the Order of Augustinian Recollects in which he was formed, to which he belonged and which he re-established in his diocese, with a great vocational flowering, was a feature that all Augustinians recognize and thank him for."

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-26896?l=english

Newman Society: Catholic Colleges Are Lost

Says Schools Need Direction, Guidelines

MANASSAS, Virginia, JUNE 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Many Catholic universities are lost and are in need of specific policies to help them go in the right direction, says the Cardinal Newman Society.

The society said this Wednesday in response to the expressed desire of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities to eliminate the U.S. bishops' policy against honoring public figures who are at odds with fundamental Catholic beliefs.

The association's summer newsletter reported this week that the board of directors concluded during its most recent meeting that "it would be desirable for the [U.S. bishops] to withdraw" their guidelines.

The 2004 bishops' guidelines state: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

The association, which represents over 200 institutions, added that "juridical expressions of bishops' or universities' responsibilities should be kept to a minimum" in order to maintain good relations between the prelates and educators.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, said is was evident "that the many secularized Catholic colleges and universities are more concerned with doing away with the rules than ending the scandals."

"Lobbying the bishops to back off a perfectly reasonable policy would be a shameful action by the Catholic higher education establishment," he added.

The Cardinal Newman Society noted that the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities is not the only group of university leaders looking to either put an end to or amend the current policy.

After protests erupted around the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barack Obama at its graduation ceremony, Jesuit Father Charles Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, affirmed that his association had already begun to lobby the conference for a policy change.

Reilly countered that "our leading Catholic universities have lost their way, and they need precisely the sort of clear direction from the bishops that the 2004 policy on Catholic honors and platforms represents."

He added, "Catholic colleges and universities would like all of the privileges of being Catholic, but none of the responsibilities of being high-profile witnesses for the fullness of the Catholic faith."

Source: Zenit

Vietnam Prelate Dies a Witness of Persecution

Communists Mark Life of 100-Year-Old Bishop

LONG XUYEN, Vietnam, JUNE 11, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Vietnamese Catholics are mourning the death of their oldest bishop, as they continue to witness the destruction of what the late prelate strove to build.

Bishop Michael Nguyen Khac Ngu died Wednesday, less than a month after celebrating his 100th birthday. He served as a priest for 75 years, having been ordained in France in 1934.

Among the buildings that the late bishop built, all except the cathedral have been seized by the Communist government. Vietnamese Catholics continue in an ongoing battle with the government over properties that have been confiscated and buildings that have been demolished.

The most recent to be taken was the monastery of the Congregation of the Brothers of The Holy Family of Banam in Long Xuyen, which was demolished last week.

Michael Nguyen Khac Ngu was born in northern Vietnam in 1909. He entered St. Therese Minor Seminary in Lang Son Diocese in 1922, and later traveled to France for further study and was ordained there as a priest in 1934.

In 1954, after the Communist takeover of the north and subsequent persecution of the Church, he led his parishioners southward and settled with them in Long Xuyen province, south of Saigon.

The region was established as a diocese in 1960 and he was named the first prelate. At that time, it had 20,000 Catholics; today it has 240,000 in 108 parishes and 45 sub-parishes, served by 240 priests.

Though Bishop Michael Nguyen ordained a coadjutor on the same day of the Communist takeover of the South -- April 30, 1975 -- he did not retire officially until 1997.

Talking about the late prelate, the diocese's current bishop, Joseph Tran Xuan Tieu, recalled how simply he had lived "in a 20-square-meter room with an old bed and without a television or personal computer."

Bishop Joseph Tran, 63, said the late bishop set a shining example to others by devoting much time each day to prayer, and never missing daily Mass even when ill: "He read books and newspapers daily, washed his own clothes and cleaned his own room, and made toothpicks for the people in the bishop's house."