www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News What good is vision without clergy?

Administrator,

I very much agree with you. I've encouraged this approach in pms. I do not know if she has taken my advice or not. Mary has mentioned an encounter with Father Loya in the past. He has asked me in private to encourage Mary to contact him, if she wishes. I pray that she does.

Dan L

Dear John,

The worst I am doing is creating discomfort.

Causing scandal, **by definition**, is leading someone or many into sin. I am not leading any of you into sin when I point to a situation that is known in some form or fashion to all of my respondents here.

Yet none cry out against it for one reason or another.

Rather the response here has been to try to shush me for suggesting that it is far worse than most suspect and that as long as it continues, no "vision" is sufficient to masque its foul consequences.

Why even you have been called in to call me to order. Well, John, I am not the one disordered in this situation.

Do you know? Do the others know that the moment I write a letter to the Metropolitan, using my name and or the names of priests in Passaic diocese, that very letter, within the week will be on Bishop Andrew's desk? Who do you think will suffer in that move?

Do you realize that is how it works. I thought it might have caused one of you to stop and think, when I said clearly that I have been speaking with a canonist for years about several different situations in that diocese which have been handled far outside the bounds of canon law.

In Roman law the burden of proof is on the accused.

What do you do when a priest has been abused in his office as pastor, and there are no accusations against him to which he can respond? And all of the records and documents have been taken from the parish so there is nothing but the man and his bare hands left to speak for him.

Do any of you know what that presents in terms of case law in canon law? How do you deal with those who have been badly used and privately accused without any formal charge?

And that is just one of several difficulties in adjudicating any of the cases with which I have become familiar over the years.

All of the burden lies on the back of the priest. All of fear, all of the responsibility.

That is our legacy of our Roman Law. The favor lies with the Bishop.

He has, de facto, unlimited power if he chooses the right victim, one who does not have the resources to fight him, or one whom he can damage without charging, leaving the priest with nothing to respond to save for lost income, lost pension, lost health care etc.

That takes time and money to sort out and prove and these men have been supporting flagging and aging parishes and they just never dreamed they should be building a slush fund to defend themselves against a bishop bent on their destruction.

So I am suggesting a vision that redresses the wrongs and finds ways to safeguard against such behavior in the future.

I am suggesting that when there is a new bishop in Passaic that they first item on the agenda is an examination, case by case, and redress of the wrongs that everyone at some level can agree have been done.

I also suggest that you deal with the canonical realities of our Church a little better than what I have seen expressed here.

Mary

Mary,

Now this is completely unfair. I have told you many times I do not know of these things except by rumor and innuendo. Take this to Father Tom, stop accusing people unless you are willing to do something about your complaints.

I certainly agree that if your charges are true that the remedy is certainly called for. There may be readers of this forum who know exactly what you are talking about. I hope they come to the vision meeting. I hope they make their voices known. I hope you do as well. But what can be done when not one other person steps forward here? Nothing at all. Then what you need to do is marshal your facts and your people and go for it.

Dan L

Don't take my comments so personally Daniel. I was referring to Sam's letters here, and others as well. That kind of defensiveness on your part is not called for in this instance, and gives the illusion that I am only speaking to you here. I am speaking to those reading as well as those responding, if you don't mind my doing so.

Yes a remedy is called for, but with the issues being canonical ones and ones of absolute power over men's lives, you must admit that it is not an easy matter of simply marshalling the "facts." As I noted, the chancery has claim to ALL documents pertaining to any parish, and so may call in those documents at any time. Makes it difficult to marshall the facts...if the chancery does not want the fact marshalled. That secrecy is also a primary tactic and characteristic of tyrannical rule.

Maybe it is because I come from a family of professional men in the law that it is easy for me to realize that reporting a crime is not at all the same thing as prosecuting a crime. The degree of difficulty increases steadily as you progress from reporting to prosecution and that in a system where one is presumed innocent before the facts.

It is quite something else again when one is presumed guilty before the facts, as in Roman law and I wonder if you realize how serious this fact is in our VISION of being Church?...hmmm?

I also find it amusing, given the fact that I am in sufficient distress to bring this whole generic topic to a public forum, that some here have presumed that I have NOT persued all formal avenues. I did mention at the very beginning that for almost a full year this was a periodic topic of conversation between myself and Archbishop Judson, eternal memory. When he died I turned to the Nuncio. When that failed I turned to Rome.

When that failed to produce even a response to my letters, I turned to another Internet list, and now I am here and being told to be quiet.

So...I have done what all of you have suggested and more...except be quiet.

It is all of us in silence that allows this kind of behavior to continue. The same thing happens in families where violence and sexual abuse become the "family secret."

So...I may make you uncomfortable, I may make others angry, but the fact remains that one cannot have a true VISION of Church when such behaviors erode the very foundation of our clergy.

Without healthy clergy, free to teach the Gospel truth according to magisterial mandate, there will be no real Christological vision possible.

Out in my flower garden, it is called "root rot!"

Mary

Dear Dan,

Good morning. I wanted to let you know, now that you have some idea of what I have done over the years in response to behaviors that I believe are strangling our Church, that I would be more than happy to receive any messages from Father Tom in my private message system which might offer more productive avenues for direct action that will not do further damage to already beleagured priests.

In the event that I am offered no new suggestions then I think I have some question concerning the Church and vision and the exercise of episcopal power and I will try to find time over the next few days to write them up.

Is this Visioning conference Father Tom's initiative? I have friends in the Latin rite who turned blue when I referred to what you were doing as "visioning"...I didn't have time to ask more questions, since I was out running errands for my aging parents, but I did note the frowns and side-long glances. What is this little conference that you are planning actually? I did ask you at the time of your first private note to me but I think you must have missed my inquiry.

Mary

Mary,

I don't understand your resistance to contacting him. I will contact him but I would think the more considerate approach would be to contact him.

If you read the post in Evangelization you will note that the meeting is being called by Bishop John Kudra. Why not contact him? What's with the Latin priests' frowns? What is that supposed to mean?

I may have mentioned it earlier but you have caused a lot of interest. This may be good it may be bad. It's all shrouded in mystery which makes me suspicious. I think the ball is in your court.

Dan L

You needn't contact him Daniel. I am sure Father Thomas reads the board now and then. If he had wanted to speak to me directly he could have chosen to do so. As I said I have worked through "channels" for a very long time with mixed results. These things cannot be tackled entirely alone, which is why I sought the help of a canonist with experience of what has transpired in our Church over time.

You have a strange passive-aggressive way of treating me that I find very curious, Daniel. Is that Carson Daniel?

Shall I go hunt through the Evangelical notes or would you like to direct me to a note number. What is your reticence in telling me directly what the meeting is about and who it is for and why it was called?

At any rate I will come back later to start to try to draw the connection between what I have been saying about the unchecked use of episcopal power, canon law, moral law, and any potential for "vision" in the Church.

You see one cannot begin to address the depth and nuance of John Paul II's treatise on the body, if one cannot grasp and implement the most fundamental principles of moral law.

And, although Bishop Andrew has been heard to say on occasion that if it is legal, it is moral, that is not really Church teaching nor is it any part of moral or natural law.

The idea that what is legal is moral, by definition, is a perversion of Catholic moral teaching that demands a certain secularization of eccliastical vision and mission, and I think that would be an important distinction to have clearly established at the time of any consideration of Vision for the Church.

Mary

Dear Dan,

Speaking of mysteries...Who is this "Mystery Bishop" Kudra? Just how familiar are you with this diocese and Church? What is your relationship to the Byzantine Metropolia and Diocese of Parma? Are you a member of this Church or just an interested by-stander that you would not know the name of your bishop?

Mary

Just for the record, Bishop John Kudrick is a fine man, a holy priest, and a good bishop. He was with Pittsburgh before becoming a bishop and has visited our little out-of-the-way mission. He is one of the bright spots in our church and is a leader who gives me hope for our future. I believe the best thing anyone could do for our church at this time is to get behind this man and follow where he leads.

I totally agree, ByzanTn.
I didn't read the same thing into Dan's post. I think he was merely trying to clarify.
Information on the Vision and hopes for a meeting can be fouund all over the "Evangelization" Forum.
I think it is great the bishop will be attending!

Sam

Been traveling...

Can anyone explain what this thread is about?

There was nothing in Dan's post to "read into."

Unless, of course, Bishop John has changed his name from Kudrick to Kudra. Has Bishop John Michael changed his name to Kudra, Sam?...or did you simply not read Dan's post and see that he refers to Bishop "KUDRA"?....

If you are not going to read the posts Sam, the quality of your replies will surely suffer.

Mary

Bishop John isn't only attending the meeting ... he called the meeting!

In Christ,

John

Ehh?
I knew who and what Dan meant. Perhaps he made a typo. Perhaps he was in a hurry. I'm not out to crucify Dan today.
The tone of this whole thread is starting to sound a more than a little loony.
Peace, Mary.
I'm out.

Sam

My apologies to our God loving bishop whom God loves and who is a part of mankind which is loved John Kudrick. This has become a loony thread and hope that it is shut down.

Dan L