From Maureen Dowd at the New York Times:THE archbishop of Dublin was beginning to sniffle.
He could not get through a story about “a really nasty man” — an Irish priest who sexually abused, physically tortured and emotionally threatened vulnerable boys — without pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his nose.
“He built a swimming pool in his own garden, to which only boys of a certain age, of a certain appearance were allowed into it,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told me recently. “There were eight other priests in that parish, and not one of them seemed to think there was something strange about it.”
Two years after learning the extent of the depraved and Dickensian treatment of children in the care of the Irish Catholic Church — a fifth circle of hell hidden for decades by church and police officials — the Irish are still angry and appalled.
The only church leader who escapes their disgust is the no-nonsense, multilingual Martin. He was sent home to Dublin in 2003 after 27 years in the Vatican bureaucracy and diplomatic corps and found the Irish church in crisis, reeling from a cover-up that spanned the tenures of four past Dublin archbishops.
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In February, Martin held an unprecedented “Liturgy of Lament and Repentance” at a Dublin cathedral, where he asked forgiveness from God and victims of abuse and praised the courage of those who had come forward.
Wearing a simple black cassock, he helped wash the feet of eight victims and conceded that the church “will always bear this wound within it.”
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In return for doing the right thing, he has been ostracized by fellow bishops in Ireland and snubbed by the Holy See.
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Yet Martin, famous protector of victims, is an outlier of the club, while Cardinal Bernard Law, notorious protector of pedophiles, has a cushy Vatican sanctuary. And Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was in league with the notorious abuser of seminarians and inseminator of women, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, is the dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome.
Garry O’Sullivan, the managing editor of The Irish Catholic in Dublin, told me that Martin “has had a prophetic role in the church.”
When he [Archbishop Martin] was growing up, his mother always told him “go serve your Mass but don’t hang around with the priest.”
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In his brusque way, he rejects the appellation of hero.
“Nobody could have read what I have read and not did what I did,” he said as he walked me out into the windy spring day. “If I didn’t react to the stories I heard, there would be something wrong.” (My emphasis)
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
“No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.
“Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
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It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
Lord of all truth and peace, you raised up your bishop John to be servant of the servants of God and gave him wisdom to call for the work of renewing your Church: Grant that, following his example, we may reach out to other Christians to clasp them with the love of your Son, and labor throughout the nations of the world to kindle a desire for justice and peace; through Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
James Arness, who presided over the frontier town of Dodge City as television’s most enduring western hero, the laconic, fair-minded and incorruptible Marshal Matt Dillon of the two-decade-long series “Gunsmoke,” died June 3 at his home in Los Angeles at 88. The cause of death was not reported.
Mr. Arness, who was a rugged 6-foot-7, stood tall in the dusty streets of Dodge City, Kan., portraying a U.S. marshal whose badge represented more than just the force of law. He was the embodiment of quiet moral authority, a sensitive arbiter of conflict in a rough-and-ready cow town — “Gomorrah of the plains, they call it,” as he said in the show’s first episode. Only when pushed to the limit would Marshal Dillon pull his six-gun from its holster.
His relationship with Miss Kitty developed to the point that they shared a kiss during one episode in 1973. They never married, though, and the social order of Dodge City remained intact.
I am the very model of the focus of great unity
I say who is to be a bishop vis-à-vis who's not to be
And when four-thirty's come and gone with tea and crumpets for each one
I read a little Johnny Donne and give thanks for impunity
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters theological
With books and thoughts from Genesis to Greek eschatalogical
You'll never find a brighter mind just knocking 'round and killing time
The Pauline corpus whole is mine - that's why I'm Christological
Yet even with so fine a grasp on life-behind philosophy
I'll write a poem, make a vid, and burn it all to DVD
I've yet to have a thought that wasn't captured without modesty
And posted up to interwebs in matters most postmodernly
This purple cassock hides a frame that's wracked with years of self-regret
Perhaps I'd show you after ten, but not until just then, you bet
I'd like to quote 'The Body's Grace' and get along with homophiles
But unity comes with a price and Lambeth is my domicile
Because the Thames, so fast and deep, so easily o'erflows its banks
And we have all these partnerships the world around, and we give thanks
To God the Father in whose name we obfuscate and place the blame
And dare not speak the love whose fame incites us all to spank the Yanks
Who even now would like to say that what they said and what they meant
Were justice-born and justice-done and no great cause for gross lament
When some elect and some consent, it's democratic government
So let's get on our knees, repent, and sign up for the Covenant
Yet there's a place for each and all at God's communion table
And I am called an Instrument to say that we are able
If we could only change the tide and Unity could take a ride
And Faith and Order lay aside ... Perhaps it's just a fable
