Go-to Guy For Miracles

If a miracle happens in your church and you go directly to Rod Dreher with the news, are you trying to vet the authenticity, or are you going for maximum publicity? I report you decide. It's instructive to note what sort of pops out at me: the repeated use of the word Catholic. Four times in the original article post, once in the comments. I thought Mr. Dreher was an Orthodox Christian now? If so, what does he care about what the Catholics might say about an internal matter? Let's see:

After a couple of visits, we received an invitation to a party at the Archbishop’s house, after the Dormition feast. I felt divided about this. For one, I didn’t want to go to a fancy archbishop’s house. For another, I had had enough of bishops and archbishops, men who had wrecked the Catholic Church. I didn’t want to get mixed up with an Orthodox one.

Oh, OK. My bad. The use of the word Catholic is just a bonus leveraging of the story to once again bash the Catholic Bishops and Archbishops who had "wrecked the Catholic Church". Got it.

Some people asked me in emails "What's with the picture?" They wondered why his  head is covered. This caused me to search the terms incorrupt Dallas and I found much better pics here. Check this one out.

Looks a little bit nastier. And a lot less blurry than this one which is one being circulated the most. Love to get a face shot, but alas. One commenter notes: "The photographs look like a decaying corpse to me. Trust me, I know what dead bodies looks like. Haven't you people seen corruption before?"

And yes! You noticed it too. It's sort of like this phenomenon, I guess. Some people see red vestments, others see gold. Another commenter asks: "Can you please explain why the change of vestments? One photo shows Vladika Dimitry buried in gold vestments and another photo shows him in red. Was it changed from gold to red, because he is being proclaimed a Saint? Or was he buried in red and now is in gold? I'm wanting to explain this appropriately to others in my community." So I guess we're looking for another miracle of auto-changing vestments on top of the semi-incorruptibly.

Maybe Archbishop Dmitri, née Robert Royster, was a saint. I'll leave any doubts about that for the comment section; the truth will out as they say. But honestly, OCA, you are going to let Rod Dreher of the weeping statues, Rod Dreher of the family ghosts, Rod Dreher of Muzhik fame be the person to prematurely announce to the world your latest miracle?

Here's something else worthy to report. The Pravoslavie link with all the interesting pictures states the source for the photos as being this link on Facebook. Going to the FB page reveals an update:

Dear Friends,
Today, I have been asked by OCA Metropolitan Tikhon “to immediately remove this post an all images associated with it”.
Also, I am “forbidden to post any pictures of Archbishop Dmitri without permission of the Holy Synod” (!)
It worth noting, that being a citizen of a free country, on my personal page I will continue posting everything I want, as long as it is legal ant true. However, out of obedience and respect of the office of the Metropolitan I choose to follow his order at this time.
Thus, some pictures and parts of the text will be removed.
As I stated before, all pictures of the Archbishop Dmitri’s re-interment that are in my possession will be forwarded to proper Church authorities for consideration, and I expect them to inform us about their findings.
Yesterday we put Archbishop Dmitri in his final resting place in St. Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas.
I was blessed to be a part of a team, which uncovers Vladika’s earthly remains and transfers them into new coffin to be buried in the crypt of the Resurrection Chapel and probably should offer some comments about these events.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------/CENSORED/-------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few personal notes:
Obviously, I was glad to see Vladika's body incorrupt, but be it otherwise, it would not affect my opinion about his sanctity at all.
The body of St Seraphim of Sarov, the Patron of our Cathedral, was corrupted, but it does not change the fact that he is one of the most beloved Saints around the world.
We all know that incorrupt body alone is not the reason of glorification.
Knowing Vladika for 11 years, seeing fruits of his life in the Lord, I personally convinced that he is a Saint. I believe that there are many more people all over the country, who share that conviction.
There is no decision of any group of people, respected (or not) would be able to change that. If his body will be corrupted in two, 20 or 200 years (as some may wish), or will start to stream myrrh (as others may desire) it will not be changed.
No one can stop me or anyone else from addressing Vladika Dmitri in payer, and feel his response and intercession; same way as many others all around US feel his love and help.
All pictures I made during transfer of Archbishop Dmitri body will be forwarded to proper Church authorities together with my written statement for consideration.

So the plot thickens. It seems like a lot of this publicity wasn't welcome by the OCA, or maybe they had second thoughts when the thing got pimped by D Magazine, Wick Allison's other rag. It is worthy to note that the official article from the OCA on the reinterment doesn't mention the alleged incorruptibility of the Archbishop's corpse. At this point, the whole thing is purely a santo subito phenomenon.

Personally I had no idea that myrrh-streaming was even on the table. But I sort of appreciate the hedging of the bet here pointing out that the Archbishop's corpse may be corrupted at some time down the road even though it's incorrupt now. Some miracles obviously have a time limit. I mean, gee whiz, does anyone expect that the Red Sea is still parted?

But going back to the Dreher post, can anyone not see why we roll our eyes when he writes stuff like these paragraphs:

But we went anyway, showing up on a rainy August afternoon at the address on the card. It turned out to be not a palatial residence, but the modest two-story woodframe house behind the cathedral. Could this house, with the paint peeling, really be where the Archbishop of Dallas and the South lives? I knocked on the door, and in we walked, with our kids.

...

It was a family dinner. That’s how it struck us. Archbishop Dmitri, born Robert Royster in Teague, Texas, was the opposite of everything I had come to expect in a bishop. He was humble and kind and gentle. He loved his people, and his people loved him. I remember thinking how good it would be to be led by such a man.

Love and peeling paint, such a great combo. So, unlike Catholics who don't love their Bishops and don't receive any love from them, Orthodox Christians love their Bishop but can't keep his house in good repair. I've never seen peeling paint in any Catholic clergyman's house. The people of the parish won't stand for that. Or is love manifested in gushing words about supposed sanctity rather than concrete deeds? I was rather of the impression that Christ taught the opposite.

Around the internets, Vol. 2

A friend sent me this email last week. Here it is slightly edited:

I'm really not trying to get you to snap your molars off at the gum line, but I can't help but point out this followup, once again illustrating what a master manipulator Dreher is. As we saw, having baited the anti-Catholics with the Home babies story, he then quickly picked a fight with Andrew Sullivan both to provide himself with a "cutout" and to get himself linked up the food chain by provoking a response from Sullivan, which Sullivan duly supplied.

But the guy who TMFKS reminds us ostentatiously made up publicly with Sullivan only a year ago now decides to use him as his condom in two ways: first as cutout, and now as representative of Catholicism. The screaming subtext from the man who's still not going back to the Catholic Church is hardly subtle: if you really want a safely non-libertine, sodomy-free religion, better become Orthodox like him. Otherwise you might have to settle for Catholicism 3.5.

BTW, for any who might want to discuss Dante with Rod up close and personal in a hot, steamy environment, he helpfully discloses the specific YMCA where he now regularly works out and can be found:

It’s amazing that I can stand in the Y in Zachary, Louisiana....

Later my friend followed up with an earnest bleg for a Catholic to respond to this story and I said I toss something up. Which I didn't; I didn't find the time. However yesterday he got a major answer to his wish in the form of this fine article by fellow Clevelander, Tom Piatak titled "More Anti-Catholic Hysteria". Here's the meat of it:

It now turns out that the story has been grossly exaggerated. On Saturday, The Irish Times—a paper that is about as friendly to the Catholic Church as its New York namesake—reported that Catherine Corless told the paper that “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did not come from me at any point. They are not my words.” One of the boys who found the bones in the 1970s, Barry Sweeney, told the Times that "there was no way there were 800 skeletons down that hole. Nothing like that number. I don’t know where the papers got that.” When asked by the Times how many bodies were in the pit, he replied, “About 20.” Nor is it clear that the underground pit found by the boys ever was a septic tank, though it may have been; or that the bodies they saw there were from the home, though they may have been; or that the nuns were the ones who decided to put them there, though they may have been. The Times story also notes that the number of dead children from the institution is "a stark reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly. At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100 mothers." Indeed, the Irish Catholic blog Lux Occulta calculated that the mortality figures at the home are in line with general infant mortality in Ireland at the time.

Four years ago, when the same papers and bloggers trumpeting this story were attempting to blame Benedict XVI for clerical sexual abuse in Milwaukee decades earlier, British atheist Brendan O'Neill made this telling point: “it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.” Whatever may have happened at one home for unwed mothers and their children in Tuam, O'Neill's basic point also applies to the vast number of Irish nuns who served in countless schools and hospitals in Ireland and throughout the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Rod Dreher's desire to pass judgment on Irish Catholicism on the basis of one poorly sourced story, and Andrew Sullivan's desire to jettison sexual morality on the basis of that same story, tell us that they cannot be trusted when it comes to the Catholic Church. Nor, indeed, can the myriad of newspapers that gleefully ran with this story.

I'm glad Tom was the one who responded to this. It's a common sense correction using facts and the title is so accurate. It is hysteria—note how old the subject matter is. Bill Donohue is always pointing out that the abuseniks must consistently go further and further back in time to find the evidence demanded by their narrative. It is anti-Catholic; Rod Dreher is anti-Catholic, Andrew Sullivan is a Catholic who is always bashing the Catholic church for its core teachings so he is basically an enabler of anti-Catholicism. And the initial word more just reminds us that this is just the latest round of hysteria from the scandal machine which will emanate from the tares among the wheat until the end of time.

Another reason I'm glad that a serious writer like Mr. Piatak responded was because it elicited this even more hysterical response from one of the aforementioned anti-Catholics in a lame partial-retraction:

It’s wrong to call all this “good news,” but to me, it is a relief to learn that the Church may be less culpable than the initial reports indicated. I posted the shocking first story, and have posted the debunking follow-ups as they’ve become available. That hasn’t stopped pious Tom Piatak, a stringer for a turgid Midwestern monthly, from losing his grip over my blogging. A “bitter apostate” he calls me, which is theologically ignorant; according to the Catechism, an “apostate” is one who totally repudiates Christianity, while a “schismatic” is one who affirms Christianity but who does not submit to the Roman pontiff. But this isn’t really about theology with him, but rather tribal breast-beating....

Who is losing their grip here? Sorry, but this verbal ad hominem assault on Tom Piatak is not going to go well for Rod Dreher. Tom Piatak is not some breast-beating neanderthal drone sent by the Catholic hierarchy. He is a nice guy and a smart, traditional conservative who writes for Vdare, Takimag, and ...oh, wait... lookie here! Seems like Mr. Piatak wrote for TAC once upon a time six years ago.

As Mark Levin once remarked in a similar situation, "Oh, the pain of it all."

Salem Witch Trial Redux

The Western Confucian also weighed in the other day on the troubling thought post.

Mr. Dreher,

It is a shame that you went into counseling and later schism over the latest in a long line of American mass hysterias, from The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 and The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trials of 1987 to 1990, there is a direct link to The Myth of the Pedophile Priest.

Yours,
Joshua Snyder
The Western Confucian Homepage 04.19.07 - 11:39 am #

The short Jenkins piece WC cites is worthy of note. He has written a book on the topic of abuse and one on anti-Catholicism (he is not a Catholic) and has been shouting "stop the madness" from the beginning of the priest scandal. Excerpt:

Crucially, Catholic priests and other clergy have nothing like a monopoly on sexual misconduct with minors. My research of cases over the past twenty years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than clergy of any other denomination — or indeed, than non-clergy. However determined the news media may be to see this whole affair as a crisis of celibacy, the charge is just unsupported. Literally every denomination and faith tradition has its share of abuse cases, and some of the worst involve non-Catholics. Every mainline Protestant denomination has had scandals aplenty, as have Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, and the list goes on. One Canadian Anglican (Episcopalian) diocese is currently on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of massive lawsuits caused by decades of systematic abuse, yet the Anglican church does not demand celibacy of its clergy. However much this statement contradicts conventional wisdom, the "pedophile priest" is not a Catholic specialty; yet when did we ever hear about "pedophile pastors"?

Atrocity as a Rorschach Test

Blogger Rod Dreher provides us with a creative link between the school shooting atrocity at Virginia Tech and the Catholic Church scandal. It obviously takes him awhile, but read it; it's almost as fun as playing "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon". Excerpt:

Understand, I'm not trying to sentimentalize this mass murderer. I'm trying to understand how a human being gets to the place where he can commit mass murder. In the summer after 9/11, I was still so consumed by anger over the mass murders committed by the terrorists (as well as the Catholic church scandal) that I was grinding my teeth at night, and was distracted in various ways by the anxiety it caused. So I agreed to my wife's request to see a Catholic therapist and learn how to let go of the anger. The therapist began by suggesting that what Mohammed Atta et alia had done was something that was within my capacity as a moral agent to do. I angrily resisted this, for obvious reasons, but the therapist was working to get me to see that what those terrorists had done, their act of infamy, was something that I was capable of under certain circumstances. The idea, I think, was to move me toward understanding their act as all too human, and helping me to find some sort of forgiveness, of letting go. It was an infuriating thought, and I don't know how far we could have gotten with this line of thinking in therapy. Our sessions ended abruptly after about a month when the therapist yelled at me for about an hour and told me I was tempting hell by having written critically of John Paul's handling of the sex-abuse scandal.

Two months ago the same thing happened during Rod's movie review of Apocalypto, and a friend pointed it out to me. That's same friend notified me of this latest post earlier today, along with his comments:

This is a ridiculous post. If I were his editor I would not let this post see the light. I would delete it.

At what point is Rod going to write about identifying with the Bishops who were dealing with this over time on a case-by-case basis? If he really wants to be intellectually honest, is he going to put himself in the mind of the perverted priests and try to perform the root cause analysis, by some experience he had when he was a lad?

If he wants to do root cause at this point, he should be analyzing the mindset that doesn't allow C&C types on campus. How about just the criminal justice majors who are applying to be police?

I recently remarked on how the working boy had slowed down on bashing the Catholic Church, but disappointingly, it seems like being anti-Catholic is still "something that is within his capacity as a moral agent to do." It seems like evil, portrayed in the Apocalypto movie and embodied in the horrible multiple murder at VA Tech, reminds Rod of the Catholic Church at some kind of subconscious Rorschach level. My friend's point is on target: the clergy involved in the church scandal don't get the luxury of his amateur root cause analysis that mass murderers do.

Not a surprise. Get an editor, Rod.

Catholic League Update

Got a notice from the Catholic League. They've launch a huge internet ad campaign on Townhall.com to attract new members. One of their goals is to raise funds obviously, but also, from the letter:

By advertising on Townhall, we are bound to attract a lot of young people who regularly visit such Internet sites. Even if they can't afford to join the Catholic League, many can be relied upon to send e-mails to the bigots whose e-mail addresses we post on out website. This is how we get out point across -- by having those who share our convictions express their outrage to the offending source.

I think it's worthy to note that Drive-by Dreher only bashed the Church four times in March, a drastic reduction from his eleven in February. He also admitted that he "shipwrecked [himself] within Catholicism" in a tortured post confessing that there is scandal in his new church, but he doesn't know what to do about that yet. We sincerely hope and pray he figures out an appropriate course of action.


Maybe that scandal coming to light will halt or slow down Rod's attacks on the Catholic Church. But whether that's the case or not, I'm glad he's doing other things recently with his free time, like chatting with Camille Paglia.

February Month-end Closing

It's month end, folks, so time to shell out the bucks.


For those just joining us, read about the bash pledge here.

Speaking of checks: I wonder where my check from the USCCB is. I was expecting a big one for, you know, defending church closings and covering up the outsourcing of Ash Wednesday ash production.

Cha-ching

Another nice gratuitous slap at the Catholic Church brings us up to $6.00. It turns out that some Catholic churches are -- for shame! -- buying ashes instead of producing them locally.

Does the Father not understand the sense of continuity and connection between this year's ashes and last year's Palm Sunday services. To dust everything living returns? Good grief! All in the name of convenience.

I imagine these are probably the same churches using cheap imported wine for communion?

Anyway, Rod then provides an example of a bad Catholic liturgical experience he had. Deja vu, anyone? In the combox, a commenter calling himself "ignorant-redneck" who "hates being Catholic" throws a few sticks on the fire:

This post sums up well, why I hate being catholic. Love the magisterial theology, love the liturgy, when it is the liturgy. Have almost no respect for priests or bishops, because of things like you just wrote about.

It gets even better as he instructs us on the meaning of the theological word "damn". Commenter TGB then gives us a laugh and saves me from having to comment:

Don't worry, someday, somewhere you'll find a priest or minister or shaman or mullah who says things exactly the way you want them said, until they say something differently than you want them said and then you'll find another who says things exactly the way you want them said. It's a journey, not a destination, you know.

In other news, a dog barked at a cat somewhere across town.........

Never Attack a Priest

The Pieta Prayerbook contains this admonition:

CRITICISM OF PRIESTS
Our Lord's revelations to Mutter Vogel
"One should NEVER attack a priest, even when he's in error, rather one should pray and do penance that I'll grant him My grace again. He alone fully represents Me, even when he doesn't live after My example!" (page 29, Mutter Vogel's Worldwide Love, St. Grignion Publishing House, Altoting, South Germany (29. 6. 1929)

When a Priest falls we should extend him a helping hand THROUGH PRAYER AND NOT THROUGH ATTACKS! I myself will be his judge, NO ONE BUT I!" "Whoever voices judgment over a priest has voiced it over me; child, never let a Priest be attacked, take up his defense." (Feast of Christ the King 1937) "Child, Never judge your confessor, rather pray much for him and offer every Thursday, through the hands of My blessed Mother, Holy Communion (for Him) (18.6. 1939) "Never again accept an out-of-the-way word about a Priest, and speak no unkind word (about them) EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE! Every Priest is My Vicar and My heart will be sickened and insulted because of it! If you hear a judgment (against a Priest) pray a Hail Mary." (28. 6. 1939)

"If you see a Priest who celebrates the Holy Mass unworthily then say nothing about him, rather tell it to Me alone! I stand beside Him on the altar!" "Oh pray much for my priests, that they'll love purity above all, that they'll celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with pure hands and heart. Certainly the Holy Sacrifice is one and the same even when it's celebrated by an unworthy priest, but the graces called down upon the people is not the same!" (28.2. 1938)

Mary, Queen of the Clergy, pray for them.

Most of the folks carrying around the Pieta Prayerbook are pretty serious Catholics. Some are trads, but some are the good salt of the earth folks that work behind the scenes to make everything happen at a parish from fish fries to singing in the choir.

My introduction to it came through Vince. He credited his survival of a heart attack to the prayer book being in his breast pocket. He told me "Don't listen to these people who say the Mass has to be in Latin. The first Mass was celebrated by Our Lord and he did the whole thing in Yiddish." Close enough; point made.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

Another Knee Jerk

A friend of the blog (or a friend of the blogger at any rate) sent me an email after reading my first reply to Andy:

There was a post by Rod within the last two months. The argument was something like this: 

• Politicians are doing bad things
• Wal-mart sells tampons.
• Dogs bite other dogs.
• This is very similar to the way the Catholic Bishops betrayed everyone by moving the perverts from parish to parish.

If you can remember it, that post is a good example of him straining at gnats. I really can't remember. All I remember is the subject was X and then, out of the blue, here come the Catholic Bishops!

It only took us ten minutes or so to find out what he was talking about. Turns out there weren't any dogs or Wal-mart products involved, rather it was his review of Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto. Excerpt:

[O]ne of the most poignant moments of the film comes when the evil Maya who has led the slave-gathering expedition tells his adult son, who has been with him on the trip, that today, he has proven himself a man -- and then he (the father) passes the mantle of manhood on to his son in the form of a hunting knife. It really is a tender moment between father and son, because in risking their lives to gather slaves, they have enacted a ritual that their civilization teaches them is a good and necessary thing to become fully a part of society. And yet, they have done great evil....

And me being me, I couldn't help thinking of how many Catholic bishops in all sincerity thought tolerating and covering up for the cruelty of clerical child abuse was actually a noble and necessary thing, to keep the "civilization" of the Church running -- and how that corruption has in fact led to a weakening of that civilization. Given Gibson's deep faith as well as his disdain for institutional Catholicism, I find it hard to believe that this thought didn't cross his mind.

Mel was probably thinking about Catholic bishops when he directed the scenes showing the corruption of some members of the Jewish Sanhedrin in the Passion, too. And ever notice how the villains in those Lethal Weapon movies are all men -- just like Catholic bishops! Gary Busey did play a clergyman in a Hitchhiker episode 2 years prior to his evil "Mr. Joshua" role in LW1. The plot thickens.

The word Catholic is used eight times in the movie review, in case you just ate dinner and don't feel like reading the entire thing to get an exact count. If you do read this and don't detect an incredible jerking knee, please leave a comment here providing a proper example of the euphemism knee-jerk.





Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

Good Catch: We're Up To 4

A friend of this blog noticed a bash in a recent post. It seems at first glance to be merely praising a Catholic Bishop for making a tough decision. On further inspection, though, the phrase "catches hell" gives it away.

The article cited mentions one angry parishioner from the removed priest's parish and the letter she wrote.

Our Lady of Guadalupe church member Julia Broyles said she wrote an angry letter to Vann when Father Gil was dismissed, telling him that she didn't approve of what he did and asking for his reasoning.

[snip]

None of that mattered to Broyles, she said. "That was way back when he was a oung man," she said. "We see where Jesus forgave the adulterous woman. Why can't we forgive? The man's trying to be good."

She would not be inclined to hold her leader to a higher standard than anyone else, she said. "Jesus talked to the woman caught in adultery and told her to go and sin no more, your sins are forgiven. I think we should not even think about what was in his past. It's none of our business."

Heck, is that catching hell? Hell, that's not even catching heck!

I'm sorry, but one person writing a letter, even an "angry letter" to a bishop does not constitute a "hell-catching", even if contains (faulty) reasoning that the bishop is in error. Phrases like "Why can't we forgive?" and "It's none of our business," are mild compared to the kind complaints diocesan offices sometimes get. This is another effort to paint Catholics as insensitive to The Scandal™ using an isolated anecdote.

Mo' Money

...for the Catholic League. Yeah, some mock outrage is expressed at the means, but it's a bash nonetheless.