Weekly Collections for December 27, 2015 weekend

No numbers report for Decemeber 27, 2015

Philadelphia DA trying to keep convicted priest in prison

 

December 29, 2015 12:20 AM

By Jeremy Roebuck / The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors urged a state appellate court on Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn what had been the first conviction nationwide of a Roman Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams asked the Pennsylvania Superior Court for a chance to reargue the case against Monsignor William J. Lynn in front of a full court panel of the nine judges.

His request came a week after a three-judge panel ordered a new trial for Lynn, perpetuating what has been an up-and-down legal fight for the 64-year-old monsignor three years after his conviction on child endangerment charges.

“We will continue to fight to keep Monsignor Lynn in state custody, where he belongs,” Mr. Williams told reporters. “We have to do all that we can — especially when an institution uses institutional power to protect pedophiles.”

Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said the move by Mr. Williams’ office was not entirely unexpected.

“This is like a never-ending saga,” he said. “Hopefully the Superior Court’s opinion will stand.”

In tossing Lynn’s conviction last week, the Superior Court took issue with evidence prosecutors introduced at the monsignor’s 2012 trial in an attempt to prove that the Philadelphia Archdiocese had historically mishandled child abuse complaints involving area priests.

Some files shown to jurors from the archdiocese’s so-called “secret archive” dated back to the 1940s, preceding Lynn’s tenure as the archdiocesan official in charge of handling sex abuse cases by decades.

Lynn had been charged with mishandling decisions involving one specific priest — the Rev. Edward J. Avery — who had a history of sexually abusing children. Despite previous allegations lodged against Avery, Lynn allowed him to live in a Northeast Philadelphia rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty to the 1999 attack and is serving five years in prison.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, who presided over Lynn’s original trial, ruled that the historic evidence of the church’s treatment of accused priests offered insight into the monsignor’s decision-making once he took over as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy in 1992. It also shed light on the archdiocese’s practice of protecting its own institutional interests by covering up abuse complaints, Judge Sarmina found.

However, Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the Superior Court majority last week, described such evidence as “unfairly prejudicial” and sided with Lynn’s argument that it effectively turned him into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the Church.

Mr. Williams defended Judge Sarmina’s decision at a news conference Monday, in which he sought to couch the case in a larger discussion of child sex abuse involving perpetrators that are known to their victims.

“The evidence presented at trial showed the jury and the world that handling of Father Avery was completely typical of his handling of other similar predator priests and established that he knew just how dangerous such priests were,” he said.

If pressed, the district attorney added, his office was prepared to try the case against Lynn again in Common Pleas Court.

Lynn remains housed in a state prison in Waymart, northeast of Scranton, having completed more than two years of his three- to six-year term.

But last week’s Superior Court ruling was only the latest development in what has become a back-and-forth legal fight over the case.

The same appellate court panel tossed Lynn’s conviction once before, finding in 2013 that he had been improperly charged under a law that did not apply at the time of his alleged crimes. That legal victory was short-lived as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned that decision and reinstated the jury’s guilty verdict earlier this year.

Last week’s Superior Court ruling threw out Lynn’s conviction under a different argument — one of 10 made by his lawyers — but did not address the monsignor’s eight remaining claims.

In its court filings Monday, Mr. Williams’ office urged the full Superior Court to settle all 10 of the monsignor’s arguments to prevent “years of unnecessary litigation” as the case moves between appellate courts.

In the meantime, Mr. Bergstrom, Lynn’s lawyer, has petitioned Judge Sarmina to order his client’s release.

A hearing on that request has not yet been scheduled, but Mr. Williams said Monday he planned to push back against it.

Prosecutors Seek Rehearing Of Monsignor's Case

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia’s district attorney has asked a state appeals court to take another look at the case of a Roman Catholic church official whose conviction over his handling of sex-abuse cases was overturned last week.

Monsignor William Lynn has been imprisoned intermittently since his 2012 trial and remains in custody.

District Attorney Seth Williams on Monday asked the full state Superior Court to hear the case. A three-judge panel of the same court ruled 2-1 a week ago to award Lynn a new trial.

The panel said the trial judge erred in allowing weeks of testimony from 21 accusers to show how the Philadelphia Archdiocese handled sex-abuse complaints.

Williams says he’ll appeal the finding to the state Supreme Court if necessary.

Lynn’s attorney says “at some point it just seems to be a little much.”

Above is from:  http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/12/28/philadelphia-prosecutors-seek-rehearing-of-monsignors-case/

Monsignor's conviction over sex-abused complaints reversed

 

 

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The landmark conviction of a Roman Catholic church official imprisoned over his handling of priest sexual abuse complaints was overturned Tuesday for the second time.

The state Superior Court ruling awarded a new trial to Monsignor William Lynn, who has been on a legal roller coaster since his 2012 trial on child endangerment charges.

The appeals court said the trial judge erred in allowing weeks of testimony from 21 other accusers to show how the Archdiocese of Philadelphia handled sex-abuse complaints that dated to 1948. The three-judge panel wrote that the judge went too far in permitting the "other-acts evidence."

That evidence "covered a myriad of circumstances that provided only minimal insight into (Lynn's) state of mind," the panel wrote.

Lynn, 64, was convicted of endangering a policeman's son who said he was sexually assaulted as a boy by two priests and a teacher, including a previously accused priest who was transferred to his parish. Lynn was the first church official ever charged over his handling of abuse complaints.

"It's certainly taken a toll, but he's holding up," said defense attorney Thomas Bergstrom, who hopes to get him released from prison quickly. "It's a roller coaster, and he's been on it. Hopefully, we can end it now."

Lynn, the secretary for clergy in Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, has intermittently served about two years of his three- to six-year prison term. He has been back in prison since April, after the conviction overturned in 2013 on different grounds was reinstated by the state Supreme Court.

Philadelphia prosecutors, who could again seek reinstatement, said they were reviewing the latest decision in Lynn's case, which they said involved a "crime of violence."

The archdiocese this year settled a lawsuit filed by the victim, who said he has been in drug treatment repeatedly since childhood.

Lynn had control of scores of priest-abuse complaints kept locked in secret church archives at the archdiocese. Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, at Lynn's sentencing, said she thought he perhaps hoped to address the situation by compiling a list of known and suspected predator priests, but he instead stayed silent when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had the list destroyed.

"This ruling (Tuesday) rubs salt into already deep and still fresh wounds of Philadelphia Catholic and victims," said David G. Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

In the case of the policeman's son, defrocked priest Edward Avery pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges. The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and teacher Bernard Shero maintained their innocence but were convicted at trial. Engelhardt has since died in prison.

This story has been corrected to say The Rev. Charles Engelhardt was convicted in a related case and died in prison, not The Rev. Andrew McCormick.

Capital Campaign for the weekend of December 20, 2015

No numbers for regular weekly contributions.

Two additional pledges; $4,010.00 addtional pledged.  Appears date is actually as of December 21, 2015

Muslims and Chirstmas

Maryam, Mother of Jesus, in the Quran

In All Things

Francis X. Clooney, SJ | Dec 18 2015 - 10:41am | 9 comments

Studying the Quran as a Catholic IV

Cambridge, MA. I began this series because of my sharp disagreement with Donald Trump’s call to close our borders to all Muslims, and distress at how others seem to approve of the idea. His call for this is in my judgment wrong, unworkable and also ignorant. I felt it timely to urge my readers to push back against this dangerous ignorance and literal exclusion of people of another faith tradition, in part by informing ourselves about each other’s religions. For those of us who are not Muslim, the recently released Study Quran presents a fine opportunity to make the case for study and learning, and so I have offered this short series, A Catholic Reads the Quran during Advent. This is the fourth of five posts before Christmas.
I appreciate the considerable interest among readers of these posts, many by personal email, and some posted at the America site. Excepting a few commenters who appear too eager to draw conclusions—about Islam, about me—I appreciate the posts, including those who want to read the Quran differently, with differing views on mercy or violence in the Quran. (I am also grateful to the reader who pointed out that the volume does contain an essay toward an Islamic theology of religions, Joseph Lumbard’s “The Quranic View of Sacred History and Other Religions,” a beautiful essay worthy of close reading.)
As I have said each time, my point is not that we agree, but that we who are not Muslim educate ourselves on these matters, resist caricatures of Muslims and be open, ideally, also entering into conversation with Muslim neighbors likewise open to studying the Bible. While such a community of readers will not push aside headlines dominated by the Trumps and the ISIS supporters of this world, we will in the long run make the greater difference.
Given that we are deep into Advent, I thought it fitting now to explore The Study Quran on the theme of Mary, Mother of Jesus. The ample index tells us that there are more than 50 references to Jesus in the Quran, and more than 15 to Mary. They are mentioned in the editors’ commentary many more times, as the index shows us. The editors point out that Mary is the only woman named in the Quran; while most such named figures are prophets, there is debate about Mary’s status, some listing her among the prophets, others preferring to say that she is “an exceptionally pious woman with the highest spiritual rank among women” (763).
They add that in a hadith (traditional saying), “the Prophet names Mary as one of the four spiritually perfected women of the world,” (763) who will “lead the soul of blessed women to Paradise” (143). In Sura 66 (Forbiddance), Mary is evoked again respectfully, “the daughter of Imran, who preserved her chastity. Then We breathed therein Our Spirit, and she confirmed the Words of her Lord and His Books; and she was among the devoutly obedient” (66:12). One commentator, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, takes this to mean that Mary “believed in all previous revelations.”
I need not deny that other passages diverge further from Christian faith, yet without disrespect for Mary and Jesus. In Sura 5 (The Table Spread), for example, we read, “The Messiah, son of Mary, was naught but a messenger—messengers have passed away before him. And his mother was truthful. Both of them ate food. Behold how We make the signs clear unto [the People of the Book]; yet behold how [those signs] are perverted.” The commentary notes that the Prophet Mohammed is described in the same way in Sura 3:144: “Mohammed is naught but a messenger; messengers have passed before him.”
The commentary adds, “The assertion in this verse that both Mary and Jesus ate food is meant to affirm their full humanity and refute those who see them as divine. Of course, Christian theology also sees Christ as ‘fully human’ and ‘fully divine,’ and the Quranic view of Jesus as fully human is consistent with certain verses of the New Testament, such as Luke 18:19 and Philippians 2:6-8, which stress Jesus’ humanity in relation to God.” That Mary was “truthful” places her in the company of the prophets; she is the one who testifies to “the truth of Jesus’ prophethood and message.”
In Sura 3 (The House of Imran), Mary is introduced as the daughter of Imran and his wife, who prays, “I have named her Mary, and I seek refuge for her in Thee, and for her progeny, from Satan the outcast.” (3:36) Mary is then placed by the Lord under the care of Zachariah, father of John. This version of the Annunciation follows:

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And (remember) when the angels said, “O Mary, truly God has chosen thee and purified thee, and has chosen thee above the women of the worlds. O Mary! Be devoutly obedient to thy Lord, prostrate, and bow with those who bow” (3:42-43).

She is twice chosen: as the pious girl dwelling in the Temple, and as the mother of Jesus. A few verses on, the angelic message is put this way,

O Mary, truly God gives thee glad tidings of a Word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, high honored in this world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought nigh. He will speak to people in the cradle and in maturity, and will be among the righteous.” She said, “My Lord, how shall I have a child while no human being has touched me?” He said, “Thus does God create whatsoever He will.” When He decrees a thing, He only says to it, “Be!” and it is. And He will teach him the Book, Wisdom, the Torah, and the Gospel. And (he will be) a messenger to the Children of Israel (3:45-48). 

Finally, Sura 19 (Maryam) treats Zachariah and John at its start, Abraham and Moses later on, and in-between (19:16-36) recounts again the story of Mary and how she came to give birth to Jesus. Mary, exiled in the desert and alone, prays to a mysterious figure who comes to her: “I seek refuge from thee in the Compassionate, if you are reverent.” (19:18) He is an angel, a messenger, who tells her about the son she will bear. Mary consents, but after conceiving the child, she is again alone and bereft, and cries out in words that refugees worldwide may be tempted to use even today: “Would that I had died before this and was a thing forgotten, utterly forgotten!” (19:23) The angel shows her the running water and date palm tree that Lord has provided for her, and she survives. When confronted by her gossiping neighbors when she returns home with her newborn child (there is no Joseph, no Bethlehem, in this account), Mary chooses to be silent (as Zachariah was by force) and lets the child speak for itself:

He said, ‘Truly I am a servant of God. He has given me the Book and made me a prophet. He has made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and has enjoined upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I live, and (has made me) dutiful toward my mother. And He has not made me domineering, wretched. Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I am raised alive! (19:30-33)

The commentary fills most of several pages on this account. It highlights Mary’s intial desperation: “She wished he could have died before the onset of the difficulties she now faced as a woman giving birth to a child alone, without a husband, including both the physical pain of labor the embarrassment about what people would think of her.” She almost prefers oblivion, though some traditional commentaries see her as “expressing the ultimate victory against the worldly ego,” to forget the world and be forgotten by it. That Jesus speaks, even as an infant, shows his resolve, as newborn prophet, “to absolve his mother of any blame or suspicion.” That is to say: to be a prophet (even today), is to speak up on behalf of the excluded, downtrodden, helpless.
The commentary reports how this Sura, on Mary and Jesus and other prophets, once helped save the lives of Muslim refugees under the protection of the Christian Negus (king) of Abyssinia. A Makkan delegation had come and demanded that the refugees be turned over for execution. The Negus asks that first a Sura of the Quran be recited. When part of this Sura is recited, “the Negus and the religious leaders of his court began to weep profusely and refused to hand over the Muslims, indicating that the religious teachings of the Quran were deeply related to those of the Christian faith.” Is it not so very right, that Scripture might inspire those in power to protect rather than abandon those in dire need, even if they are of another faith?
The commentary also points out the stylistic unity and harmony of this Sura; it is one that you may wish to listen to, if you have never heard Quranic recitation. I found this recitation pleasing to the ear, though I do not know Arabic. Or you may wish to go more slowly with a version that includes a translation.
That I highlight in this way some of the passages dealing with Mary in the Quran is by no means a novel idea. Readers interested in more on Mary, Jesus and other biblical figures in the Quran, can turn to John Kaltner’s Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qur’an for Bible Readers (1999). That Mary can even today be a powerful protector and nurturer of Muslim and Christian unity was well expressed in 1996 by Cardinal William Keeler. Similarly, in 2014 Fr. Miguel Angel Ayuso, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, highlighted the great importance of Mary in Muslim-Christian dialogue.
Can we not imagine that in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, Mary will help refugees across closed borders, and open the hearts of gatekeepers who would close the door on people who live by the holy Quran? As Pope Francis wrote when he declared the jubilee year of Mercy,

Chosen to be the Mother of the Son of God, Mary, from the outset, was prepared by the love of God to be the Ark of the Covenant between God and man. She treasured divine mercy in her heart in perfect harmony with her Son Jesus. Her hymn of praise, sung at the threshold of the home of Elizabeth, was dedicated to the mercy of God which extends from “generation to generation” (Luke 1:50). We too were included in those prophetic words of the Virgin Mary. This will be a source of comfort and strength to us as we cross the threshold of the Holy Year to experience the fruits of divine mercy (Misericordiae Vultus).

In the final post in this series, I will reflect further on what the Study Quran helps us to learn about Jesus himself—a difficult topic already at issue in the paragraphs above.

Violence in the Quran

In All Things

Francis X. Clooney, SJ | Dec 15 2015 - 8:50am | 19 comments

Studying the Quran as a Catholic, part III

Cambridge, MA. I continue here my brief series on the Quran, how the new Study Quran can be an aid to interreligious understanding in the necessary battle against the twin evils of ignorance and violence. One might similarly look at The Jewish Study Bible, which includes the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, or The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. We need to be studying each other’s holy books, and we can, and we should.
It is important to remember that my concern here is the study of the holy book itself, rather than all the important contextual issues that must also be addressed. I admit, as always, that the study of the text does not replace other “infinite paths of learning”: the study of one’s own deepest self, the study of the surrounding social and political conditions and, finally, our unending encounter with God. The study of the text is only a small part of the larger wisdom required of us, but it is an irreplaceable part. That it is easy enough to do should shame those who refuse to actually study other religions before judging them. The Study Quran means that this vastly influential holy book is now more easily available for our study, open and ready, and my posts are meant to be examples of this study, by a reader who is not an expert on Islam.
In my last post, I reflected on the God of mercy, the compassionate and merciful Lord of whom we hear again and again in the Quran—and who is very much in the forefront of the consciousness of Catholics during Pope Francis’ Year of Mercy. I did intend now to move on to Mary and Jesus in the Quranic tradition but thought that perhaps skeptical readers would charge that I’d taken the easy path: Who can object to the idea that God is merciful? So I thought it wiser to stop for a moment to ask a difficult question: What then does the Quran say about violence?
One place to start is Caner Dagli’s masterful article in The Study Quran, “Conquest and Conversion, War and Peace in the Quran.” Citing key but disparate texts, Dagli reminds us that at various points in the Quran, the political context makes the teaching seem to incline toward peace or the taking up of arms. Each sura (chapter) and the key verses in each sura, need to be studied and read in context. While at a deep level the Quran is perfectly consistent, one cannot retrieve its teachings by citing just one passage or another.
But here I can consider just two passages. First, consider these verses in the second sura, “The Cow:”

God, there is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting. Neither slumber overtakes Him nor sleep. Unto Him belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is on the earth. Who is there who may intercede with Him save by His leave? He knows that which is before them and that which is behind them. And they encompass nothing of His Knowledge, save what he wills. His Pedestal embraces the heavens and the earth. Protecting them tires Him not, and He is the Exalted, the Magnificent. There is no coercion in religion. Sound judgment has become clear from error. So whosoever disavows false deities and believes in God has grasped the most unfailing handhold, which never breaks. And God is Hearing, Knowing. God is the Protector of those who believe. He brings them out of darkness into the light. As for those who disbelieve, their protectors are the idols, bringing them out of the light into the darkness (2:255-257).

 

This magnificent passage will remind us of similarly lofty words in the Psalms or the Prophets of Israel, and we can benefit from meditation on them. Of course, we naturally seize upon the words, “No coercion in religion,” which seems to leave matters of faith and belonging in God’s hands. The children of the light and darkness are allowed to go their own way, by God’s mysterious will, and humans are not to interfere. Yes, the passage is also judgmental, speaking of false deities (any deity but the Lord) and idols (anything one worships as equal to God), and what is needed is a 21^st-century Islamic theologies of religions.
The Study Quran’s commentary on the verse, a full page, fills out our understanding. It points us to parallels, for example at 10:99-100 and 18:29. It also explores a variety of traditional interpretations, and asks how the verse was originally applied, even perhaps in the context of “mixed marriages” with Jews or Christians. One needs to go back to the original social and political context to understand how it is to be read, since out of context it can easily be misread, misused. In brief, though, the commentary concludes, “The fighting Muslims carried out was motivated by political circumstances and not the desire to convert.”
My second text, from the ninth sura, “Repentance,” serves to bring out another side of the matter. As the commentary suggests, it might even be taken as superseding the passage we have just read:

 

And an announcement from God and His Messenger to the people on the day of the great hajj: that God and His Messenger have repudiated the idolaters. So, if you repent, it would be better for you. And if you turn away, then know that you cannot thwart God. And give the disbelievers glad tidings of a painful punishment, save for those idolaters with whom you have made a treaty, and who thereafter commit no breach against you, nor support anyone against you. So fulfill the treaty with them for its duration. Truly God loves the reverent. Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wheresoever you find them, capture them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform prayer and give the alms, then let them go their way. Truly God is Forgiving, Merciful. And if anyone of the idolaters seek asylum with thee, grant him asylum until he hears the Word of God. Then convey him to his place of safety. That is because these are a people who know not (9:3-6).

 

The words are certainly strong: again, judgment is passed on the “idolaters” and “disbelievers;” if they break treaties one must ambush them, capture them, slay them. And yet—there is always more—if they repent of their treaty violations, they can be allowed to go their own way. Idolaters can be granted asylum, safe haven. Here, too, the commentary tells us, we will have to learn about the politics of the early Islamic world, and the Prophet’s efforts to hold his community together, defending it against hostile neighbors; not every word is meant for application in every time and place. My own impression—after preliminary study—is that we find here a sanction of force, but force constrained within the context of diplomacy and treaties, and in the end, ever open to peace, since God, who repudiates idolatry and has no patience with treaty-violators, also “loves the reverent” and is ever “Forgiving, Merciful.”
So what do we conclude? All is in God’s hands; peace is at the core of Islam; there have been and are times when believers have to fight fiercely; people who believe differently are in God’s hands, not ours; divine mercy is never exhausted. All this is very complicated, and perhaps I confuse readers by offering a few insights rather than a full study of such themes. But the point is that further study is needed, not just by the experts, but by you and me. Hence the value of The Study Quran. In the short run, read Caner Dagli’s essay, mentioned above and then, when you have time, start reading passages such as the two I have cited, and then, using the commentary and the index, start flipping back and forth and noting down all the other passages one must read.
To say that all this is complicated is not to evade hard questions, but to insist on hard study. We do not get to judge the Quran without studying it, nor can we walk away from it with some handy verse that suits our friendly or hostile purposes. With any sacred scripture, our own or another, we push back the forces of ignorance and violence if we engage the whole, in all its depth and complexity, insisting on slow study in the face of impatience, fear, anger, and ignorance.

Studying the Quran as a Catholic II

In All Things

Francis X. Clooney, SJ | Dec 11 2015 - 9:33am | 12 comments

'The Study Quran' in Advent

Cambridge, MA. Ironically, sadly, just when Donald Trump wants to close the door on Muslims, Pope Francis was opening the holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica, insisting that divine mercy is never a closed door. Indeed, as he insisted back in April when he announced the Holy Year of Mercy, this is truth shared widely with Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths. After offering a strong affirmation of God’s mercy in Jewish tradition, he turned to Islam:

Among the privileged names that Islam attributes to the Creator are ‘Compassionate and Merciful.’ This invocation is often on the lips of faithful Muslims who feel themselves accompanied and sustained by mercy in their daily weakness. They too believe that no one can place a limit on divine mercy because its doors are always open.

 

So let us begin there, with the first words of the Quran itself: “In the name of God (Allah), the Compassionate (al-Rahman), the Merciful (al-Rahim” (1.1). These words open every chapter of the Quran except one, the ninth (“Repentance, al-Tawbah), which speaks of repentance but also of fierce contest with idolaters; more on that difficult chapter another day. Here, in the very first chapter, the next verses echo the same theme: “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful” (1.2-3).
The Study Quran— a wonderful Christmas gift for studious friends and family in all its magnificent 2,000 pages—invites us to simply read the chapters of the Quran itself, or to ponder any given verse with commentary, or, as I have begun to do, also to look into the 57 page index, to follow a word across the many chapters. But surely the basic point is simple: right from the first verses of the first chapter we begin to learn much about God’s compassion and mercy. We are confronted with it, surprised by it, drawn into it. This is a core truth of Islam, repeated over and over, and neither the bigoted nor the violent can obscure the fact.
The first chapter of the Quran is only seven verses long, but the commentary in The Study Quran extends for nearly seven pages, and is full of insights for beginners like myself. “God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:” the divine essence (Allah, God), the unity of all divine attributes (Compassionate), and the unity of divine acts (Merciful). “The Compassionate” is a divine name that no other can bear, since “it connotes the Loving-Mercy by which God brings forth existence.” “The Merciful” indicates “the blessing of nourishment by which God sustains each particular being.” Compassion is like the sun, mercy is the ray of sunshine warming and vivifying every given thing on earth. The first (Compassion) brings the world into being, the second (Mercy) “is that by which God shows Mercy to those whom He will, as in 33.43, ‘And He is Merciful unto the believers,’” enabling them to endure as they were created to be. And that Mercy is, in turn, the wellspring of other Divine Names: the Kind, the Clement, the Beautiful.
We learn later on, in 21.107, that the Prophet Mohammed is sent by God as an act of mercy: “And We sent thee not, save as a mercy unto the worlds.” The commentary here explains the subtlety of the Arabic: “The grammar of the verse allows it to be understood to mean either that the sending of the Prophet Mohammed was a merciful act by God or that the Prophet is himself a mercy that God sent. It can signify that the Prophet is a possessor of mercy, is merciful, or is himself a mercy.” This is, the comment continues, a manifestation of the mercy to which the Law tends, and a mercy for all, the whole “world,” and not just believing Muslims. Even those who do not believe in the Prophet experience his mercy, which wards off doom even from those who reject him; he will intercede for all, on the Day of Judgment.
And finally—I cannot go on too long—this mercy brings peace and harmony to men and women, who find their partners by divine mercy: “And among His signs is that He created mates for you from among yourselves, that you might find rest in them, and He established affection and mercy between you” (30.21). This, we are told in the commentary, is “an address to both men and women, telling of the manner in which God has extended His own Love and Mercy to them through the love and mercy that they manifest toward one another.” One could continue tracing "the Merciful" for a long time; God is invoked this way well over 100 times in the Quran (or so my counting in the index suggests).
The comments are, we are told, drawn from the 41 traditional commentaries listed at The Study Quran’s beginning. One thousand five hundred years of wisdom across the bottom of the page. Like most of you reading this, I cannot go and check those original sources for myself, but it seems that the illuminations of every word of every verse are rooted in the consensus of a long lineage of earlier readers. We do not read the Quran on its own, but with those who have gone before us. Is this not the Catholic faith, too?
And, as I have just shown, mention of the opening of the Holy Door of Mercy by Pope Francis, seen by him to be an act that will resonate with Jews and Muslims and believers in other traditions, has opened easily, smoothly, into these passages from across the Quran. The Study Quran makes it so very easy for us to meditate on God’s mercy, the reality that shames and extinguishes hatred among people of different faiths. In the same declaration I cited at the start of this post, Pope Francis makes an appeal for a Merciful Encounter among believers, the very opposite of fear and discrimination, hatred and violence against the outsider:

 

I trust that this Jubilee year celebrating the mercy of God will foster an encounter with these religions and with other noble religious traditions; may it open us to even more fervent dialogue so that we might know and understand one another better; may it eliminate every form of closed-mindedness and disrespect, and drive out every form of violence and discrimination.

 

Granted, his words do not, and my words certainly will not, suffice suddenly to change the reckless tone of our politics and extinguish the international infatuation with violence. Last night, I listened to a moving conversation at the Harvard Divinity School, with Pastor Dr. James Movel Wuye and Imam Dr. Muhammad Nurayn Ashafa, as part of the H.D.S. Religions and the Practice of Peace initiative. These courageous figures have opened doors to reconciliation between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, and their work is more immediately important than the study we do. But learning, study, teaching are fundamental to living faith in any tradition, part of the human race’s spiritual DNA, essential to our survival in a world that spirals downward when ignorance prevails. Pray, study and act.
(Note to readers: I haven’t forgotten my intention to offer reflections on Mary and Jesus, as seen through this Study Quran. But going slowly here, too, is a help, and in either the next post or the one thereafter, I will take up that theme.)

'The Study Quran' and the Battle against Ignorance

In All Things

Francis X. Clooney, SJ | Dec 8 2015 - 10:32am | 16 comments

Studying the Quran as a Catholic

Cambridge, MA. If there was any doubt, it should be clear now that Donald Trump lacks the moral quality required of a politician who would become our president. He has offended both morality and practicality by his rants against Mexicans, his call to deport all illegal immigrants, his bullying and his disrespect for those who dare to argue with him. His new call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States is another, singular instance of his lack of the credentials, moral as well as intellectual, that would make a person a serious candidate for our highest office. His call to exclusion is not only deeply offensive to Muslims, it is an abomination to people of other faith traditions as well. Indeed, it is hard for me, a Catholic priest who knows the Bible reasonably well, to imagine how any Christian who respects the Word of God can in good conscience support or vote for Donald Trump, especially after his mean-spirited and dangerous call to ban Muslims who would enter the country.
But underlying his rant against Muslims seems to be a deep ignorance of Islam, and the loud pretense that such ignorance is not a problem. ISIS and similar violent organizations likewise seem to manifest ignorance regarding what Islam is really about, how to interpret—as one must—its original texts and its traditions. Ignorance and violence, verbal and physical, travel together.
And so, those of us who can need to make determined efforts to cut through the ignorance of this dangerous moment. As a professor—and as a priest—I suggest that one thing we can do is study Islam, and learn more of this religious tradition. (In another context, I might urge all people of religious faith to study each other’s scriptures; no religious community can imagine itself exempt, as if interreligious knowledge is optional or unimportant for its true believers.)
There are many ways to study Islam, of course, and reliable textbooks exist regarding Islam’s history, its theology, and its acculturation to new environs over the centuries. But some of us—particularly those of us, such as myself, who have no particular expertise regarding Islam—should seize the opportunity just now made available to us, of purchasing, or borrowing, from a friend or the library, The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) and studying it carefully. To see this new volume as a timely resource today is hardly a novel idea, and many have already noted that in a time when ignorance is rampant and violent, this can be a book of great value. See the endorsements at Amazon.com, and also at many places on the web.
It is a very impressively put together volume. The fresh translation of each of the 114 suras (chapters) of the Quran is accompanied by copious notes, frequently more than half of the page, and sometimes even several full pages of commentary on some few verses. These notes are rich in necessary historical and linguistic information, and are rich in detail from the many commentaries on the Quran through the ages. The editors of this volume take very seriously the task of “study,” and want to give readers everything they require for this work.
A general introduction by Seyyed Hossain Nasr, chief editor, precedes the translation, along with some initial advice, “Approaching the Study Quran.” Fifteen essays by distinguished scholars conclude the nearly 2000 page volume, with themes such as: “How to Read the Quran” (Ingrid Mattson), “The Quran in Translation” (Joseph Lumbard), “The Islamic View of the Quran” (Muhammed Mustafa al-Azami), “Quranic Commentaries” (Walid Saleh), “Quranic Ethics, Human Rights, and Society” (Maria Massi Dakake) and “Conquest and Conversion, War and Peace in the Quran” (Caner K. Dagli).
This volume is, then, something like a combination of the Oxford Annotated Bible and the Jerome Biblical Commentary. Much to read, much to learn, all the more important when the ignorant are the loudest.
Of course, even I recognize that the media moves quickly, ideas and diatribes fly back and forth at great speed, and few of us (even busy academics at the end of the semester) actually have the time to sit down and read the 2,000 pages of this volume carefully. Trump and company will not care for such learning, but continue of their path of exaggeration, fear-mongering and violent rush to judgment. Politics trumps all. Terrorists, violent under the guise of Islam, will likewise have no time for the quiet reading of the text: wisdom is the most fearsome enemy of terror, after all. But we must sit down and we must read, and we must share what we learn, to push back the waves of ignorance about Islam by a good dose of knowledge. Of course, knowledge does not predictably serve a single purpose, and it may be that in our study we also come up against ideas or sentiments in the Quran that we do not agree with. But we will be much better off if our disagreements are grounded in close reading, and articulated with respect to specific points.

 

In the weeks to come, on and off as time permits, I will practice what I preach, by a series of brief reflections appropriate to this season of Advent, on Mary and Jesus in the Quran. While much has been written by scholars on them, and while I am certainly not the one to glean any new scholarly insights (Hinduism being my field), I will venture, between now and Christmas, to see what I can find in the Study Quran that opens my eyes and mind and heart about Jesus and Mary, and share it ever briefly with you. I may also point out a few things I disagree with, even as I learn from them. More in a few days.

 

Dr. Anne Hendershott Become a fan Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville

                          

Another Catholic Scandal?

New York City's faithful Catholics were disheartened yet again as they picked up their daily newspapers December 11th to read the front page headlines--replete with pictures--of a priest accused of involvement in a sex scandal. Sensational banners like New York Post's "Hot Under the Collar," and "Sex Slave Priest's $50 Shades of Pray," along with the New York Daily News headline: "Exclusive: Bronx Priest Stole More than $1 million from Two NYC Churches, Used the Cash on Wild S & M Romance with Beefy Boyfriend," cannot help but demoralize the faithful.

The revelations surfaced last week when a lawsuit was filed by parishioners from St. Frances de Chantal Church in Throgs Neck naming their pastor, the Rev. Peter Miqueli of theft and misconduct. They were joined in the lawsuit against the pastor by parishioners from his former parish, St. Francis Cabrini, on Roosevelt Island. The lawsuit also names the Archdiocese of New York for failing to protect parishioners from the theft. Also named is a Bronx doctor, who is also a Church trustee, who allegedly provided the pastor and his alleged partner with more than $60,000 worth of Dilaudid, club drugs, and other illegal drugs.
According to Michael Dowd, the attorney representing the parishioners, "These charges of theft and misconduct have been made for at least 10 years...It is unbelievable that the diocese can't come to a conclusion about the misconduct of Misqueli when there is money missing that may be a million dollars."
The lawsuit suggests that the Archdiocese has been reluctant to respond to their complaints--Timothy Cardinal Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York are also named as defendants in the Manhattan court papers. Jack Lynch, a Bronx parishioner told a reporter , "We can't understand it. It seems they are going out of their way to protect him, and for years. We suspect a scandal behind the scandal."
Continuing the story, December 12th's front page New York Post article ("Sermon of the Mount") reveals claims by Tatyana Gudin, a spurned ex-girlfriend of Keith Crist, Fr. Miqueli's same sex paramour, that she sent emails to Cardinal Dolan last summer detailing the lurid details of the scandalous affair and suggesting that Fr. Miqueli was stealing money from the parishes he pastored. Fr. Miqueli finally resigned later that day.
Defending the Archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, media director for the New York Archdiocese issued a statement to parishioners claiming that: To date we have found nothing to substantiate the allegations that have been raised and in fact with regard to parish finances, we know that the allegation that Fr. Miqueli stole $1 million from each parish, as was alleged by the plantiff's [sic] attorney, is completely false. We did find that Father Miqueli had deficient management and administrative practices, and have put forward several directives to remedy those deficiencies." Zwilling concluded his letter to parishioners to ask that "if anyone has information or documentation to substantiate the allegations, we would invite them to bring that information forward, or to contact the D. A."
Cardinal Dolan has acknowledged receiving the emails last summer--and turning them over to the prosecutor's office. But, he did not remove Fr. Miqueli from his position as pastor. According to the Post, Cardinal Dolan said he was "upset the allegations against Miqueli were outed before a probe could be completed. What distresses me, is the innuendo that the archdiocese is taking this with anything less than the gravity it deserves...We've been cooperating with these people. We've had a number of audits. And we're prepared to arrive at a resolution within the first of the year."
It is becoming ever more difficult for Catholics to know what to believe about these kinds of issues--especially when some Catholic leaders seem so reluctant to share information. Just last summer, a popular and highly respected priest, Monsignor Michael F. Hull, the pastor of the Church of the Guardian Angel in Chelsea, Professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Joseph's Seminary, and Executive Director of the Sheen Center, a 25, 000 square foot arts center in New York City abruptly left the priesthood. In March, 2014, Hull had been the subject of a laudatory Wall Street Journal article on the magnificent Sheen Center. Several bloggers have reported on what they called his "disappearance," including Matt C. Abbott at RenewAmerica, and Maureen Mullarkey at First Things. In "The Case of the Missing New York Monsignor," Abbott writes that phone calls to the the Seminary at Dunwoodie and the parish "elicited only the comment that Monsignor Hull was no longer there." In First Things on July 27th, 2015, Mullarkey charged that "Monsignor Hull misspent parish funds on a palatial renovation of his rectory only to go AWOL with a young intern at the newly created Sheen Center. Now, married, he is a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Once the darling of Cardinal Egan, Hull was sheltered behind institutional silence. No word of his canonical status appeared in letters to priests or in Catholic New York, the Archdiocesan house organ."
Unfortunately, during the same month that Mullarkey published her column on Monsignor Hull in First Things, and Tatyana Gudin was sending the incriminating emails to the Archdiocesan offices, Cardinal Dolan began his Annual Report (published in Catholic New York on July 23, 2015), with the statement that: "The Archdiocese of New York is joyful, alive, and growing."
Indeed, it is what Mullarkey has called the "institutional silence" that has most angered faithful Catholics in these cases. While we all understand the need for confidentiality, and appreciate the willingness of Archdiocesan offices to fully investigate these kinds of horrific allegations, it is difficult for Catholics to understand the lack of communication from Church officials on issues that directly affect them. Faithful Catholics understand sinners--we are all sinners. Our Church will survive our sinfulness. But, the Church cannot continue the silence surrounding the kind of allegations that have been made against Fr. Miqueli for more than ten years. A lawsuit is not the way to begin the conversation. But, it is clear that parishioners believed there was no other way; and that is the real sadness surrounding this story.

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Did NY Archdiocese buy silence?

 

Blackmail? Cover-Up?

Did the New York archdiocese buy Fr. Miqueli's silence?

December 16, 2015  219 Comments

          The tabloid press having field day in New York on this story.   The parishioners' lawsuit is available at:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/12yp-3ZDvMecdw_bjz4_Oa4VhfI59Ww-V2noaZhT_SWI/edit.                          

TRANSCRIPT

The case involves what we have been reporting on the past few days: that a lawsuit has been filed against Cdl. Timothy Dolan, the archdiocese, and a homosexual priest and his gay-for-pay male prostitute. The priest and prostitute are accused of ripping off over a million dollars from two New Yotk parishes and using it on their homosexual fantasy sex life. The archdiocese and Cdl. Dolan are accused of being negligent and non-responsive in addressing the continued concerns of parishioners. And ChurchMilitant.com has learned of one possible reason for the lack of concern and desire to keep the story under wraps by the archdiocese.
Keep in mind that the archdiocese has known about this for a very long while, but it was only after massive press coverage, including a series of reports from ChurchMilitant.com, that the archdiocese finally sprung into public action. Father Miqueli is no longer the pastor. A resignation statement purported to have been written by him was read before every Mass over the weekend, with archdiocesan spokesman Joe Zwilling lurking around at the back of the church.
So the question: What would be the case now had the lawsuit by parishioners and subsequent media reports these past few days not happened? Answer: likely nothing. How can we say that? Because prior to the suit and coverage, the archdiocese and Cdl. Dolan already knew all of this. No new information to them has been revealed in the past few days. Without that lawsuit and coverage by ChurchMilitant.com and local New York media, parishioners would still be screaming and their cries ignored. Amazing what happens when the spotlight gets shined on corruption.
What ChurchMiltant.com has also learned is that Fr. Miqueli felt a sense of invincibility in his life of larceny and lust, because, according to people close to the story, he witnessed a child molestation by a priest on Staten Island back around 2002 and went to the archdiocese. They told him to keep silent about it, and, according to reports, arranged for him to become pastor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini parish on Roosevelt Island in exchange for his cooperation.
If this is true — and sources are standing by their story — it would fit a certain pattern here on the part of the archdiocese and Cdl. Dolan to fully investigate faithful Catholics' claims against Miqueli.
First, very little has been done about this by archdiocesan officials despite knowing about it for at least two years. Second, when one of the auxiliary bishops was told about the story by a church worker, the whistleblower was fired. Third, communications between the parishioners and the archdiocese reveal a cavalier attitude on the part of the archdiocese, so much so that parishioners thought they had no other option other than to go to court.
And then there is the reality that without the current media coverage and lawsuit, there isn't one thing to suggest that Fr. Miqueli would not still be pastor and supposedly thieving from the collection basket to fund his drug-fueled sex romps with a live-in gay prostitute.
So the larger question begins to be asked: Did Fr. Miqueli witness a child molestation and report it to the archdiocese? He has told that story to more than one person. If he did, is it true that officials back in 2002 — just at the exact time the whole homosexual priest sex abuse scandal was breaking open — bought his silence?
This scenario would explain his cavalier comments that he has powerful friends in the archdiocese who "protect him." This would all lead to a very plausible reason that the archdiocese would seek to ignore this whole story in the face of various complaints and meetings with parishioners over the course of years.
It was only after the girlfriend of the gay-for-pay prostitute stepped forward recently and told everything about the nearly 10-year-long sadomasochistic sexual relationship between Miqueli and Keith Crist that a motive for the million-dollar embezzlement came into focus.
But with that now clearly on the table, so is the prospect of criminal charges — which would almost certainly swamp the archdiocese as well — with the Bronx district attorney now waiting in the wings. The problem is the D.A. is waiting for the archdiocese of New York to finish its internal audit before making a decision whether to pursue a criminal investigation. That is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house because the archdiocese has every reason for this not to go criminal.
However, there is still the question of a civil lawsuit hanging out there — and if that ends up unfavorably for the cardinal, the D.A. may have to pursue the case, regardless of any lackluster search for the truth on the part of Church officials.

Above story is from:  http://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/blackmail-cover-up


The New York Post also supplies coverage:
The Rev. Peter Miqueli was intensely jealous of his S&M boy toy — and it was that jealousy that led to his ouster from the pulpit, The Post has learned.
Miqueli flew into a rage after discovering that his bought-and-paid-for “master,” Keith Crist, had a longtime girlfriend he secretly shacked up with in the Harlem apartment for which the priest was paying rent.
The randy rev eventually forced Crist to pick between him and the woman earlier this year, spurned girlfriend and whistle-blower Tatyana Gudin told The Post.
When Crist picked Miqueli, kicking her out of the apartment, it helped set off a chain of events that has led to the priest’s downfall at St. Frances de Chantal Church in The Bronx.
It was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Gudin said of getting tossed into the street by both Miqueli and Crist, prompting her to reach out to a lawyer, church parishioners and even Cardinal Timothy Dolan to tell them the priest was leading a secret life of lust and larceny.
“When [Miqueli] found out — it was late March — he got really mad and really jealous,” Gudin said. “He [Miqueli] conspired with my boyfriend to illegally lock me out.”
Gudin, 45, claimed Crist, 41, and a pal of the priest changed the locks at their East Harlem pad on April 16, knowing she would be out for several hours having oral surgery.
The New York Archdiocese and Bronx prosecutors are investigating whether Miqueli stole church funds to pay for his sinful relationship with Crist.

Modal Trigger

Keith Crist (right) was living with his girlfriend, Tatyana Gudin, when the Rev. Peter Miqueli forced him to choose and Crist kicked her out, the spurned woman told The Post.

Parishioners have filed a lawsuit against Miqueli — largely informed by Gudin’s statements — for allegedly stealing up to $1 million in church funds.
The disgraced priest was nowhere to be found on Sunday — not at his New Jersey home nor at St. Frances de Chantal Church, which announced that Miqueli was stepping down.
“What can I say? I’m embarrassed,” the priest’s brother, Joseph Miqueli of Pasadena, Md., told The Post.
The brother declined to get into any specifics, but hinted that he and other loved ones knew something was wrong after meeting Rev. Miqueli’s musclebound pal.

The Rev. Peter Miqueli’s alleged bodybuilding sex “master,” Keith CristPhoto: Foursquare

“It was kind of obvious,” said Joseph Miqueli. “I know that’s terrible. He’s got to ask for forgiveness. He’s in a mess. He’s in a pretty big mess. This thing is huge.”
Meanwhile, Dolan said after Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday that he “admired’’ Miqueli’s decision to step down.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s dark, it’s somber, it’s dreary. I’m sad for the good people at that parish.
“I’m sad for my priests who once again are tarnished,’’ added Dolan, who took heat while in Missouri over accusations he didn’t do enough to address priest sex scandals.
Upon his promotion from auxiliary bishop in St. Louis to succeed the archbishop in Milwaukee, Dolan said that he had learned his lesson about slow response.

St. Frances de Chantal Church in The BronxPhoto: Christopher Sadowski

“I’ve learned some very hard-won lessons. We can’t do business as usual . . . We’ve got to be more open, more transparent,” he said in 2002.
A rep for the Bronx District Attorney’s Office said Sunday that prosecutors are waiting for the archdiocese to complete its internal audit of Miqueli before pursuing any criminal charges.
Meanwhile, worshippers at St. Frances de Chantal broke into applause Sunday when a letter from their disgraced priest was read before each Mass announcing he was stepping aside.
Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan, Khristina Narizhnaya and David K. Li


New York Post:   http://nypost.com/2015/12/14/jealous-priest-forced-boy-toy-to-choose-its-me-or-your-girlfriend/



The above tabloids are making much of the problem, but it does indeed to appear to be a scandal.

Update: 

New York City priest at the center of a sordid sex scandal resigned Saturday after outraged parishioners accused him of embezzling at least a million dollars in donations to, among other things, pay a male hustler for $1,000-a-session sadomasochistic encounters.
Among Father Peter Miqueli’s kinky fantasies, according to The New York Post, was being humiliated in front of a “nice Jewish girl” in the Orthodox Borough Park, Brooklyn enclave.
Tatyana Gudin, the ex-girlfriend of the male hustler, dished about a lot more of the priest’s alleged peccadillos in a letter to the New York Archdiocese.
Angry parishioners are suing the church, the priest, the alleged hustler (identified as Keith Crist), and Cardinal Timothy Dolan in a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court.
“Since 2003 the defendant Father Peter Miqueli used his position of trust and confidence as a pastor, as a man of God, to misappropriate and divert hundreds of thousands of dollars of donation funds from parishioners at the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church on Roosevelt Island and the St. Frances De Chantal Church in the Bronx,” the suit says.
“Rather than use parishioner donations for religious and charitable purposes, Father Miqueli used the donations to grow his personal wealth, purchase a house in New Jersey, take dozens of international vacations, purchase and use illegal drugs, and pay for the weekly services of his homosexual prostitute and “sex master” Keith Crist.”
The suit also accuses the church of knowing about the activities. A spokesman for Dolan said an investigation is underway and Dolan has reportedly admitted seeing Gudin’s allegations, which have been turned over to prosecutors.
Miqueli announced Saturday night he was stepping down from the Bronx parish as the story spread like wildfire online.
“I have made the decision to step aside from my position as pastor of this parish while this unfortunate and regrettable situation is investigated,” he said. “It is in the best interests of the parish that this matter be resolved without me serving as your pastor.”
Miqueli denies any wrongdoing.


Read more: http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/326826/the-priest-the-hustler-and-the-nice-jewish-girl/#ixzz3uZsSysTe

 

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Are conservatives at high-stakes Vatican summit overplaying their hand? - Religion News Service

 

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Ever since a Vatican summit last year raised the possibility of making the church more open to those whose family lives may not mirror the Catholic ideal, conservative foes have been in uproar, waging an intense campaign to block any reforms from being adopted.

Yet as a follow-up meeting this month has progressed, the enthusiasm of the traditionalists could be overwhelming their tactical judgment — annoying and even angering  enough of their fellow bishops they may have weakened what was once considered a strong position.

Still, the conservatives may also have created enough disarray and disagreement to ice any significant moves toward change, or taint any proposals they may offer to Pope Francis when the meeting, called a synod, concludes on Oct. 25 after three intense weeks.

The most public, and, for the conservatives, embarrassing episode came earlier this week with the leak of a private letter to the pope from 13 cardinals opposed to reforms.

In the letter, the senior churchmen complained that Francis had set up this meeting of 270 bishops from around the world in a way that would favor reformers who want, for example, to adopt a new approach to gays and lesbians or find a way that divorced and remarried Catholics could receive Communion.

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READ: Thousands visit human remains of youngest Catholic saint near Chicago

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Several cardinals quickly denied signing the letter, and others said the letter they signed was a bit different from the leaked version, though they did not say how.

That sent synod delegates and Vatican-watching media into a frenzy of speculation, until it was reported that there were in fact 13 signers, only some of them were different from those originally claimed.

Moreover, one of those newly revealed to have signed was Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, a top official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

DiNardo’s participation in the secret campaign was seen as a knock at Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl. That’s because Wuerl is a member of the committee named by Francis to draft the synod’s final report — a group whose composition had irked the conservatives.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan was also a signer, and after initially declining to comment, Dolan gave a radio interview, set for broadcast Saturday (Oct. 17), that offers a circuitous rationale for the letter. At the same time, Dolan pegs conservative Australian Cardinal George Pell — a top Vatican official and outspoken opponent of reforms — as the ringleader of the effort:

“Cardinal Pell in his good shrewd way said, ‘Am I correct in summing up some of the concerns?’” Dolan says in the interview. “And some of us, myself included, said, ‘Boy, that sounds good to me. If you have a letter to the pope, count me in.’ And, sure enough, I signed it.”

• LISTEN: Cardinal Dolan interviewed about the letter he signed:

But, Dolan added, the letter was in Italian, and he said he “had forgotten about it” and was stunned when it emerged.

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READ: Who rules in Rome: Pope Francis or the Roman Curia? A papal blueprint faces red tape

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With all these twists and turns the saga was quickly becoming as absurd as it was convoluted, and it might have been seen as just another chapter in the legacy of Vatican intrigue that stretches from the era of the Borgia popes to the novels of Dan Brown — except that the plot seemed so backhanded it made the synod look faithless as well as foolish.

“The general opinion I detected among the bishops was a sense of disgust,” Bishop Marcello Semeraro, an Italian who is on the final drafting committee along with Wuerl, told Vatican Insider.

Another synod delegate, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Australia, called the leaked letter affair a “typically Roman melodrama” that was “not untinged with psychodrama.”

The problem, Coleridge wrote on his blog, is that episodes like this tend to “aggravate the sense that the Synod is not much more than a political caucus, with ideological riptides swirling around us and the odd stinger drifting by.”

Already, he said, the deliberations are struggling to battle against “a fear that can become a kind of paranoia.”

“My reading of all this is that the ploy has backfired,” wrote veteran Vaticanista John Thavis. “I suspect most synod participants are not amused at this rather obvious attempt to pre-emptively discredit the synod’s outcome.”

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READ: Pope Francis asks forgiveness for scandals at the Vatican, Rome

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The synod participant who counts most, of course, is Pope Francis, and he, too, was apparently not happy.

Pell had delivered the protest letter to Francis on Oct. 5, the first day of the synod meetings, and apparently made reference to it in comments on the synod floor.

The next morning, Francis made a brief, unscheduled speech in which he warned the bishops against buying into “the hermeneutic of conspiracy” — basically, conspiracy theories. Such fears, the pope said, are “sociologically weak and spiritually unhelpful.”

The pope’s rebuke, as well as details of the letter, only emerged days later.

But those aren’t the only examples of potential overreach by the right.

Shortly after the synod began, for example, the Polish bishops at the meeting — a solidly conservative bloc that has vocally opposed any suggestion of changes to church practices — began publishing on their website summaries of the speeches of individual participants along with each bishop’s name.

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READ: NJ archbishop sets rules for barring Catholics from Communion

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That was a clear violation of synod rules on privacy that Francis expressly wanted to allow the bishops to speak freely. The Polish bishops took down the postings after Vatican officials complained.

At the same time, nearly every day conservative churchmen or their allies are holding press conferences to denounce their opponents or their arguments in the strongest terms, or are delivering hard-line speeches in the synod hall that seem to provide little space for compromise.

And those moves follow a year of public lobbying against changes and regular charges that the reformers are manipulating or “rigging” the synod to achieve a desired outcome.

In lectures and interviews, in columns and blog posts, traditionalist churchmen and conservative Catholic pundits have also warned darkly of schisms and heresies if any changes are made, and leading cardinals, some from within Francis’ own Roman Curia, have written books blasting the reformers or rejecting proposals to lighten the off-putting language the church often uses to refer to gay people or cohabiting couples.

Ultimately, it’s unclear whether the irritation over the pressure tactics will lead enough delegates to try to move ahead without the hard-liners on board.

They probably don’t have enough support, or the desire, to go it alone. And as the synod enters its final and decisive week, there appears to be little consensus on reforms and no clear path to a resolution.

In the end, if the bishops cannot agree on opening pathways to change, as may well happen, then the status quo camp can claim victory. And if the reformers do manage to win some victories, then the prebuttal complaints by the right may serve to discredit any compromise — or leave a mess for Francis to sort out.

YS/MG END GIBSON

Are conservatives at high-stakes Vatican summit overplaying their hand? - Religion News Service