My comments are more in relation to “Why not Bush?” and I admit in my shortness, my take is definitely over-simplified. However, Bush did make tremendous promises to “save” Catholic education through the voucher program at a time when Bush was well aware of the frailty of Catholic education. He had no business doing so. He all out presented himself, despite the effort to lobby Bush was last minute, as the saving grace for the National Catholic Education Association. Bush was quite convincing on this matter. He used it to get votes from Catholics through two Presidential elections and failed on his promise.

I think that “over promise” has left a bit of a mark on the church during a tremendous time of challenges. But the “mark” is small compared to everything facing the Catholic church at large.

To put it mildly, Benedict has a major structural problem.

Most definitely! Great analysis.

Klynn, the problem for Catholic Parochial Schools has been clear since the late 1960’s. First, beginning in the mid 60’s Catholic Women’s Teaching Orders suffered a huge exodus, and attracted very few new members. Some teaching orders reformed, and changed their missions away from teaching. Thus the near free labor supply simply dried up, and without very low cost labor, the schools could not survive. In the 60’s, orders received about 125 per month per nun for maintence, with no contributions for retirement benefits, health insurance and all. In 66 the laws changed making nuns elegiable for Social Security, but the value of that is tied to “wage” and employers contributions. The Bishops absolutely refused to negotiate a way of bringing the labor value up to market value, and thus provide the orders with secure retirement income — and this just underscored the decision by many orders to abandon their past labor in the Parochial Schools. And without that free-labor, the business plan for parish schools was unworkable.

But in addition to these economic realities, the Bishops faced another one, they had, in the early 1960’s commissioned a set of major studies regarding the impact of Catholic Education on retention as active members of the Church. (Andrew Greeley was a major figure in this research, and much of it was done through NORC at the U of Chicago). Results indicated that standard Parish School education was not related to retention as had long been assumed — in fact it might be a negative variable, but that Higher Value “Academy” style Catholic Education and Catholic Higher Ed. did have a positive influence on retention. Thus — while it was never really announced to members, by about 1968 a decision had been made to phase out the Parish Schools.

Thus you have two sets of decisions — on one hand you have reforms of Religious Orders that resulted in members leaving traditional classroom teaching for other missions, and at the same time, a Bishop’s decision to gradually wind down the traditional parish school, because as an investment it did not contribute toward retention of Catholics as active members in adulthood. The effort by NCCB to lobby for vouchers is more a last minute tip to the right-wing who resisted these changes, but with whom leadership had not been at all honest about economic realities or decisions long since made that resulted in the phase-out of many unsupportable parish schools.

All this before the Clerical Abuse of Children issue hit the fan in 2002, though of course it was there long before, if you read the right publications. But in 2002 it impacted everything — certainly retention of Adult Catholics, financial assets, donations, and any sense of trust Bishops were good personnel managers, let alone asset and business managers. And all this still has more unwinding to do. Diocese by diocese the American Bishops are faced with demands for lay boards with the powers to manage assets and personnel, many of these demands coming from the people who in the past wrote the big checks to the Bishop’s Appeal, and then trusted the Bishop to manage. They want a division of labor — doctrine and teaching to the Bishops, Business management to qualified lay members.

The Pope won’t face this as a huge public matter during his visit, but diocese by diocese it is on the table. By instinct, Benedict cannot agree to devolvement of financial power to laity elected to Parish Councils — but when a diocese declares bankruptcy (and a number have) that’s precisely what the courts impose. To put it mildly, Benedict has a major structural problem.

I think the Pope, as earlier commented, will give Bush a message – for Peace, and against War and Violence – as part of the Rose Garden Ceremony.

Still, if the Pope is smart, he won’t ’smile’ for any photos with Bush – that might come back to haunt him like Hart’s Monkey Business photo with Donna Edwards.

Breaking bread with Bush, however – at this point, with the Torture Admission ‘out there’ – would seem ill-advised.

Nonetheless anybody holding shrub up to the ridicule he so justly deserves, gets me to smile

Second, the NCCB worked with the National Catholic Education Association to lobby Bush heavily during the last two elections and sent a great deal of $$$ the way of Bush, at a time when the money was lean for the Catholic church. In return, Bush promised the national voucher program through the NCLB Act. The voucher program has not taken off because states have fought it as a solution. Consequently, many Catholic schools are closing and those who could just barely afford a Catholic education cannot with the challenges of the economy.

Thus, many political dollars spent by the church with no success. Many Catholic votes lobbied for in regards to the voucher program and right-to-life. Then Bush over promised and under delivered.

Not the environment for state dinner.

More about closing schools here:

http://ap.google.com/article/A…..QD9007E700

If the good Pope wanted to take a stand, he wouldn’t show for the Rose Garden ceremony either.

That’s exactly right. He obstensibly had a conflict in the meeting with Bishops, diminishing the Dinner Dandies’ claims that they chowed down with da Pope.

It’s intriguing that people are urging Bushie to boycot the Olympics, considering that the Chinese torture, bury people in prison, jerry rig their courts with judges, a judicial system, and proseuctors who are puppets and so does the bannana republic called the United States.

Reverend Wright was much more right than wrong, but Americans are often ditz brains who cling to what they say they should be like than what they do and are like.

Voters in Pennsylvania and in every other state, as well as non-voters and people who don’t know who is running, who is on the S.Ct. or a cert. vote from a Cert mint are bitter and clinging to their guns and religion. One could do a Ph.D. thesis on that topic, people will, and many books have already been written about it.

“The South and Central Americans have long mixed traditional culture with religion”

Perhaps you didn’t understand the theological impact of those words? Ratzinger and a lot of religious leaders throughout history wanted people to think they have an unfettered pipeline to revelation/grace/God. ALL religious symbolism is mediated by history. Humans by definition are mired in space and time. If it’s not “IN” history, we won’t notice it. ALL religious phenomenon need mediation in space and time to be apprehended. Throughout history culture and religion are ALWAYS hand and glove.

Ratzinger is pushing the Latin Mass as an olive branch to Opus Dei. Jesus spoke Aramaic. Since the Romans wiped out most of his followers when they destroyed Jerusalem in 70ce and 125ce, it was the Greek Churches that survived. Of those Greek chruches that survived, the ones that made it into the canon included Paul’s churches, Matthew’s church, John’s church, Luke’s church, and Mark’s church. The New Testament was composed in Greek, not in Aramaic. The Nag Hamadi and Dead Sea Scrolls have helped us understand just how different the Greek churches were from “the Nazareans” who followed Jesus as good, pious Jews. In the Patristic era Rome is the backwoods theologically and culturally.

It’s only with the ascendancy of Europe that the bishop of Rome begins to assert something resembling primacy.

Boff and the liberation theologians were a lot closer imho to the fundamental preaching of Jesus of Nazareth than Ratzinger and the church mice who follow him.

OT,

Some time I would like to see a post on an indviidualistic society that need a modicum of authoritarianism.

I’d suggest Native American tribes. Richard Allan Fox, Jr. has done some terrific archeology of the Little Big Horn. The Sioux chief Gaul beat Custer with a group of warriors equipped with Henry repeating rifles. Custer lost for a lot of reasons, but possibly the most important, was because he refused to take into account that his men were equipped with single-shot Springfields. The Springfield was a fine weapon with almost double the range of the Henry. But, once Custer allowed the Sioux and the Cheyenne under Gaul to get inside the Henry’s effective range, the battle was effectively over. Custer’s position on Last Stand Hill was completely untenable. Reno and Benteen had the same Springfields, but their outfits survived the Little Big Horn. Benteen in particular understood the Springfield’s limitations and adopted his tactics accordingly. I say that, because it shows how equal the Sioux and the Cheyene were at the LBH in terms of military technology. The problem for the Native American tribes was that they were not able to unify with each other quickly enough against European Americans.