Weigel blasts the LCWR.

My comment to National Review's "The Pope and the Sisters"

George Weigel would have served us better by co-authoring this article with one of the sisters affected, and discussing the procedural due process (or lack thereof) available, and perhaps comparing how the Vatican has handled other straying organizations (like the Legion of Christ).  No doubt there are doctrinal issues, but the real contaminating element is not the sisters' umbrella organization but the inability of the authority structure to integrate women into leadership roles and authority roles in the Church.  It is so petty for George to imply that street-clothed sisters living in apartments has led to their diminished vocations while saying nothing about the decline of male priestly vocations and the complete abandonment of faith in Europe under the male leadership there.  If the Church were to follow its scriptural roots and accept women to be ordained as deacons, there would be an explosion of vocations among women.  It is a dedicated denial of this latent truth that motivates George and his bishop friends to be so disproportionately strident on LCWR.

Good Friday

Spectator.org has an interesting post on Good Friday. My comment is rooted in Ted R's comment. below.

Ted R.| 4.7.12 @ 3:13AM

Who do I say he was? Jesus of Nazareth was a well-intentioned, often insightful man, who (like many gurus) had an inflated sense of self-importance (and, he probably had a martyr complex, besides).

For sure, he didn't deserve to die; his execution served no purpose. At All.

Mark30339| 4.8.12 @ 12:12PM

THANK YOU TED! Finally, we get to the heart of the matter. Yours is the enduring question. While much of the commenting above may be interesting, it seems mostly rooted in prideful division. We Christians seem to be the last to recognize that we resemble Jesus so terribly little -- our discourse here is so invested in ego and pride . . . and so divested of concern for the other.

Ted, I am grateful that you ask your question and please, keep asking it. For decades I have been agonizing over why this amazing person of Jesus was horribly tortured and killed. Why did God fail to protect him, why did he not protect and raise a defense for himself. I know my life is precious, shouldn't his life be infinitely more precious?

I don't think that words answer the questions. I think they are answered in the experience of raw suffering -- especially if one endures the suffering for something greater than oneself and if the suffering is embraced as a means to identify with the experience of this holy man named Jesus.

Jesus's feeble and ignoble death is so contrary to our sense of what is right, that it gnaws at us. Jesus himself doubles down and asks each of us,

Who do you say that I AM? The person of Jesus Christ lifts me up when he refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, when he urges me to understand why the father celebrates the return of the prodigal son, and who commands me to love my neighbor as myself. The glaring incongruity is his innocently absorbing the terror and shame of crucifixion without calling for holy wars of reprisal. When we are entirely rooted in human logic, it is thoroughly illogical -- yet this incongruity is part of the cross we are called to bear.