**VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL CONFERENCE** Kooky Judge Anne Burke Channels Dr. Seuss and Cher in Bitter Attack on Catholic Church

Once again, deep thanks and much kudos to TMR for giving us a look into what actually goes on at these conferences. (I’m still wondering: how many people in this country are actually supporting these Oz-Like entities like SNAP and VOTF and Bishop-Accountability? Behind the great curtain of the internet – where a relatively small number can just keep hitting the keyboards in order to ‘look as numerous as possible’ – just how many people are actually behind these things?)
 
TMR’s précis of Burke’s speech is acutely revealing. Notice that her comments have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the Abuse Matter (which, as often been noted in both articles and comments on this site, has largely been addressed in terms of prevention).
 
Instead – and it’s so very revealing – her comments could have been delivered at – say – a National Catholic Reporter fundraising dinner in support of the general post-Vatican 2 ‘liberal’ (that much abused term) agenda.
 
In the context of the Catholic polity, what does it mean to “treat people as second-class citizens”? Catholics are not participants in the Church the same way that Americans are (or at least were) Citizens of the Framers’ Republic. In the Framers’ Vision, The People were the governors of their government and the ultimate source of the government’s sovereign authority. This is something American Progressives and ‘liberals’ have not really embraced since at least the dawn of the 20th century; in their view it is the ‘knowledge elites’ who are the only ones who really know what’s best; the government will take their advice and do whatever it takes, like trail-bosses handling a herd of cattle, in order to ‘improve’ and actually ‘re-fashion’ the lumpen masses (in the Framers’ Vision the Citizens and The People). This was given brutal clarity in the later 1960s with the ‘liberal’ idea that there was no need to listen to the majority of Citizens because ‘they just don’t get it’ so why listen to them in the first place?
 
But the Source of the ultimate authority of the Church is Christ’s commission to Peter and the Apostles. And while Christ was – I would say – far too insightful to have imagined a flawless performance by those gentlemen and their successors, yet He commissioned them nonetheless (and no doubt expected that the Holy Spirit was going to be verrrrrry busy for the rest of Time and History).
 
So Burke’s comments seem to imply that since the Church isn’t a ‘democracy’ like the United States, or like the Progressive/liberals’ view of the United States, then it is not doing the right thing and not fulfilling its mission. (And yet how often do we hear nowadays that after all these decades of Progressive and liberal governance, the United States has somehow become far less democratic and no longer resembles the Framers’ Vision?)
 
So I would say that Burke’s real thrust here is that the Church is refusing to become a ‘democracy’, and a democracy the way the “aging” liberals – in both the secular and post-Vatican 2 churchy versions of ‘liberal’ – and so the Church has to be made to change. Or else, in the alternative, the Church has to be de-legitimized in the eyes of the public. Which is where, I would say, so much of the odd trajectory and sustained velocity of the Abuse ‘Crisis’ came in, but – alas – that horse has now died out from under them and they are hard-put to Keep The Ball Rolling (and so Burke is reduced to Dr. Seuss, and – also very revealing – she doesn’t even get her facts right in quoting those children’s books).
 
Ditto the bit about Catholics having to “check their brains at the front door”: in what way do Catholics have to do so? Just because the Church continues to be faithful to those elements of belief and dogma that do not jive with the Progressive/’liberal’ agenda, is the Church and anybody who believes in the Church somehow ‘brainless’? (And most surely, if you were to buy the SNAP-py explanation for the Abuse Matter in just about all of its aspects, you would most certainly have to check your brains at the door.)
 
In matters of the Catholic Vision, we are actually dealing with an assessment about the very structure of human reality itself: Is there a Beyond? Are humans ‘citizens’ of both this dimension and a Beyond? Are humans given a fundamental essence and Shape through having been created in the Image of God? Does that Shape assume moral power as we try to then figure out what responsibilities flow from that creation-in-the-Image? What is the role of human reason? What is the role – if any – of God’s Grace and Providence? … In answering all of these Questions, you can quickly see that the Progressive/’liberal’ worldview has verrrry definitive assertions to make, and they are often almost 180 degrees opposite to the Church’s belief, tradition, and dogma.
 
And who can deny that human institutions do not protect themselves, often out of pride and even using untruth and – to use Churchill’s phrase – even “a bodyguard of lies”? Does anybody have total confidence that the US government has dealt well and openly in matters foreign and domestic in the past few decades? Should then the US government be abolished or de-legitimized?
 
(Yes, the Correct comeback is that the Church of today is not the Church of Jesus. Did Jesus – did God the Father – not realize what happens to any Ideal when entrusted to humans who are so very individually imperfect, when that imperfection is then amplified by being erected into an institution?)
 
So Burke here is basically stating a truism: it’s so very true about everything that it has almost no explanatory or conceptual relevance at all to the specific matter at hand.
 
And what does “implementing a needless attack on women religious” have to do with the specifics of the Abuse Matter? Here again, you can see – as has been often noted on this site – agendas that have very little to do with the Abuse Matter (although the Abuse Matter has proved a handy bat with which to whack the piñata for doctrinal reasons as well as for whatever benefits accrue to plaintiffs in abuse-settlement cases).
 
And  – really – has the Church even made such an “attack”? First, there are very few women religious who actually support the ‘liberal’ agenda of the Progressive elites among the Sisterhood who are still flogging for their version of the Vision. Second, it is these elites among the Sisterhood who openly make the most extraordinary claims: that the Catholic Church of today is not the Church of Jesus; that the hierarchy is some sort of usurper entity; that they have not left the Church but rather the Vatican has left the Church; that they are not sure they want to worship a ‘male sky-god’; and the list goes on.
 
What organization on the planet would not look into the matter when its own uniformed-personnel (so to speak) and official representatives are making such claims against the very essence of the organization? Do you know what would happen if you were in the military and publicly made such claims in regard to the legitimacy of the government that you have committed yourself to serve? (Which also raises the ‘still-Father Doyle’ Question: why not just ask for release from vows and leave the Church altogether and start something up on your own as you see fit?)
 
If the Vatican finally feels that it has to look into the assertions (such as those I mentioned above) that these few ‘elite’ members of the Sisterhood are making, then does such a look constitute “resurrecting the Inquisition”? (Although, actually, the original Inquisition was indeed set up to investigate heresy (not witchcraft, which was a post-Reformation Protestant focus) … but when you read some of the public statements of these dissenting ‘elites’, you have to ask yourself if they indeed haven’t gone over the line into heresy (there – I’ve used the H-word).
 
And then finally, in a neat rhetorical ploy, Burke tries to somehow connect all of this with the actual Abuse Matter by claiming that in all of the foregoing, the Church and the Vatican are “committing a new form of lay abuse”. (The other form of ‘abuse’ was the actual clerical sex-abuse … get it?) But I ask: What laypeople are being abused by the Church looking into those persons – and some of them vowed and official representatives of the Church – who publicly hold truths so profoundly antithetical to Catholic belief? I would say that you could make a pretty strong case that in all of this, it is the Church that is being ‘abused’.

P.S. And you're suprised that at a SNAP "conference" the demographics fit perfectly the Church's political line about "long ago" abuse?
And at $1200 per person plus to attend ( factoring in hotels, flights, food etc. i'm probably on the cheap side at $1200) How many working class victims can afford $1200 plus for a weekend? Oh yea SNAP is a real grassroots victims group. LOL

Per usual you define new. Who cares? If you read my initial posts you'd see exactly how new I am but again this is the lie you caught me in?  I say your entire belief system is a lie and this is the come back? Boola Boola I give you my college yell!

Didn't Leo XIII have a dream that the Church would be destroyed in a 100 years?  Loads of pervert priests and nuns, bad theology, and a mindless laity are what has come about in that past century.  Justice Burke doesn't understand the Catholic Church…otherwise, she'd be talking about reality instead of Emerson.  What is VOTF?  Just another creation of the Jesuits…the same guys who teach the art of lying? 
God himself will have to clean up the Church; the first ones to feel the heat will be the clergy and religious.  Most of them are a load of bums.  I don't think that many even believe in God.  The Church as an institution deserves a ton of constructive criticism for the failings of the clergy and religious. 

How do we assess with no access? That is precisely the internet problem.
 
Following the grammar of the question, the first challenge lies with how to assess. And to do useful assessment one must work very hard to b) analyze what information is available (not only through the internet but through reading and studying) but only after laying down a) the basis of competent investigative and analytical and thinking skills. The first challenge lies within the individual and only afterwards does the focus change to the object of investigation. First you ensure a competent mechanic, and only then do you open the hood and start looking at what’s there.
 
The cover-up as an explanatory hypothesis leaves some rather large gaps. First, it is necessary to distinguish between instance of actual cover-up as distinct from an instance where something was valued differently in a different era. So for example, were the courts, police, law enforcement and politicians all in on a nationwide ‘cover-up’ of drunken driving during the decades from the invention of the automobile to the early 1980s?
 
In the case of the public school system: since it has only just recently started to come under even a modest amount of the type of scrutiny the Church has been under for 30 or so years here, then it is quite possible that organizationally the public-school system will demonstrate the same difficulties or organizational response as is claimed about the Church. Surely the few cases we have seen publicly give grounds for thinking that there is much more going on and the organizational establishment is not being totally forthright. And one only has to look at the government (which has the added organizational advantage of ‘classifying’ inconvenient (or worse) information for ‘national security purposes’. For example, the satellite photos that ostensibly provided proof that in 1990 Iraq was massing troops on the Saudi border (thus justifying US military presence being greatly beefed up in that kingdom) have never been publicly shown and up until the mid-2000s (which was the last time I checked) were still ‘classified information’ 15 or more years after the first Gulf War (1990; Kuwait).
 
So at this point it is not easy to justify a presumption that a) the Church has ‘covered up’ and b) that the Church is unique in this organizational response.
 
Thus too, of course, the question of transferring teachers who are suspected of abuse. Up in Boston there has been a significant indication that such transferring has been practiced and thus there exist valid grounds for suspecting that there are other instances of such practice.
 
Therefore there is a lot of careful groundwork yet to be done before getting to the making-conclusions and assertions stage.
 
In addition to the foregoing, there is perfectly legitimate justification for considering as an explanatory hypothesis the possibility that the flare-up of the American type of Catholic Abuse Crisis in other countries (mostly Western) is simply a migration of the same syndromal dynamics over there that have been going on over here.  
 
Holding people and organizations responsible for actions is certainly a general human idea of a good thing to do. But when such holding-responsible is going to be done in the legal forum (through civil lawsuits or criminal process) then an entire additional (and much more stringent) evidentiary standard is introduced, on top of the general Scientific Method requirements for competent and reliable analysis and assessment.
 
Thus “the problem here” is, as I said, first getting competent mechanics and then second making an accurate assessment of what’s wrong under the hood. This is not a challenge easily met by the usual internet methods – about which I have written a great deal in comments on this site – that confuse argumentum with assertion. (I use the Latin term whose English equivalent is ‘argument’, because in English the word ‘argument’ popularly boils down to vitriolic back-and-forth emotional exchanges; whereas in Latin the word means a reasoned and careful analysis, put forth step by step leading to a rationally demonstrated conclusion.)
 
I and every other Catholic bear the burden of the hierarchy’s actions the same way that American Citizens (and taxpayers) bear the burden of their government’s actions, foreign and domestic. Where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.
 
By the same token, Catholics “enable” their hierarchy in the same way that American Citizens “enable” their government. And again, where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.
 
However, given the many complications at the analysis-stage of dealing with the question, then there’s still a lot of ground to be covered before deciding just what Catholics are “enabling”. Especially when it has to be realized that this is 2012, and not 1962 or 1982 or even 2002 – the hierarchy has made some very substantial changes (perhaps more than any other organizational entity in the country).
 
And lastly, and as I have been saying, Catholics are “responsible” for the actions of their hierarchy in much the same way that American Citizens are “responsible” for the actions of their government, in its actions both foreign and domestic. And again, where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.
 
But I think it’s clear that the all-too-common internet tactic of Assert First and Disparage Questions Later is grossly incapable of conducting the type of analysis and assessment necessary to achieve an accurate and informed grasp of any particular Issue or Matter or Problem.

Yes.  This is so, Publion. The Church IS being abused, and for millennia. The Church is the people of God, as you must have heard, Publion, and she has been abused, all right. And from the anti catholic bishops who put obedience to corrupt authority above conscience, and the protection of the wee ones, otherwise known as the least among us.

So now your beating up women. What a grand Catholic tradition. The center of the Catholic Church is as gay as gay can be yet they are self hating. They create generationaly their own loathing oppresors (and themselves.) for what, a God of Love? This aint the dark ages.( Probably the Church's favorite time.) Yet there is still a lot of brightening to do. At this site there is always a forelock tugging. A church in retreat yet swiping viciously like a frightened cat as it exits the door of history. As to having any pretense for knowing what is morally valuable, the Catholic Church finally advanced in some areas is hoplessly death gripped when it comes to itself.

Jim, You are generally off the mark in your comments. But I still hope you have a nice day.