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Catholic Caucus - Michael Brown's Appeal to Cardinals and Bishops
Spirit Daily ^ | 5/1/02 | Michael Brown

Posted on 05/01/2002 6:24:00 AM PDT by history_matters

CARDINALS AND BISHOPS, PLEASE LEAVE THE CHANCERIES AND COME AMONG US TO HEAL

Dear Cardinals:

We wrote the American bishops a month ago. At that time we suggested (hopefully with adequate humility) that the current crisis in the Church could be resolved in large part by a return to tradition -- by a return to basic Christian holiness. 

If you would so allow, we'd like to extend that argument. We write you again with what we hope is obedience. But we write with urgency. There is revolution in the air. Lay groups are forming. Radical nuns are expressing rage. The average Catholic wants an entire overhaul of some basic Church teachings, and the majority polled by secular media now even want women priests.

The only way to avert this -- the only way to prevent a deepening crisis, and perhaps even a split (at least ideologically) with Rome -- is to get back to the example of the apostles.  

What we mean is that instead of a bureaucratic approach -- instead of the current aloofness -- our leaders should be evangelical. They should be mystical. 

This is not a criticism; it is a plea. Please, bishops and cardinals, come out of the chanceries. Pray with us. Recite the Rosary. Adore the Blessed Sacrament in public. Heal. This will solve more than a dozen national meetings or trips to Rome or press conferences.

Dear cardinals, deliver us. You have the authority. You have the power -- as did the apostles -- to cast out demons and there are demons all around your flock. They engulf us. They engulf you. Cast them out. Send them away as Peter sent them away in the Acts of the Apostles -- a part of the Bible we all need to revisit. Cast evil spirits out of the priests and seminarians and theologians who have caused atrocities -- who have harmed our young. 

Exorcise, dear cardinals. You do not have much time left. Deliver us. We are under assault and need the hand of your high anointing and this is what Christ left: the legacy of His Holy Spirit. As in Acts, show us the wonders, the miracles, the force of God. We know you can tap into that because you were chosen and have unusual gifts. Use them, dear prelates. Move with those gifts. This and only this will bring us above the crisis. Only with prayer and the special charisms you have can we heal the Church and prevent what may otherwise be a yet greater disaster. The Church will survive -- we have no doubt about that -- but it is going through a purification and during a purification there is the need, the urgency, of the Spirit. The media and the lawyers and the enemies of the Church -- so encouraged at this moment -- will never know what hit them!

It is what the apostles and disciples did: When they were in trouble they asked God to stretch "forth Your hand in cures and signs and wonders" (Acts 4:30). 

Are we any different today? Has God changed? The apostles prayed so hard they sent demons out shrieking (Acts 8:7). They shook the place (Acts 4:31)! They went to the streets of Tyre and Derbe and Phoenicia as we need you now to come to the streets -- the homes -- of Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix.

We look at Scripture and what we see is that the apostles were not bureaucrats or academics or politicians. They established the Church through signs and wonders and now we must re-establish it in the same way. We will come out of this not with intellectual dissertations, not legislative remarks -- but faith expressed with the love of Jesus. 

We realize that in the modern structure of the world there may be the need for diplomacy and certain trappings of power but worry that in this regard modern chanceries (limos, palatial rectories) have become too worldly. It is in simplicity that we best convey the truth and in poverty that we find true power -- which will bring us out of situations that seem to have no exit. 

Call on Jesus. Call on Mary. Call on Joseph!

This is the Church. This is what the earliest bishops -- the apostles -- did. This was the work of the disciples. Come out of the chanceries, dear cardinals, and pray with us into the night. Lay your hands on us. We need you! This month of May, pray the Rosary.

Dear cardinals, you have been at too much a distance. We need you as apostles. We need you to come among us. Heal us, Your Excellencies, Your Eminences. Pray with us. Lay your hands on us. Speak to us of the wonders of Jesus. If you do that, a new and vital Church will grow. If you do that, nothing can come against you. If you do that you will beats all odds and the Church will be saved (as it says in Acts 2:40) "from this perverse generation."


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: catholic; catholiccaucus; catholicchurch; catholiclist; reform; renewal; rosary
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To: Aquinasfan
Let Cardinal Mahoney know what you think of the new cathedral. "Your comments are welcome!"

I wonder if Mahoney has been in consultation with Robert Shuller. Maybe he's building a new crystal cathedral and going to have an ecumenical Hour of Power! If that's a cathedral and this piece of work, Mahoney, is going to build it, then I'm goin' to look into the Eastern Rite.

41 posted on 05/01/2002 10:59:11 AM PDT by ThomasMore
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To: Mike Fieschko
MING the MERCILESS:

LOL! That's who Mahoney reminds me of.

42 posted on 05/01/2002 11:02:01 AM PDT by ThomasMore
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To: NYer
Cardinal Mahony wants future citizens of Los Angeles to remember him not only for the monumental new cathedral he has commissioned but also for the updated liturgy he has designed for use there.

Who the hell does he think he is to be "designing a liturgy"? Has he ever heard of the G.I.R.M.?

43 posted on 05/01/2002 11:02:51 AM PDT by Steve0113
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To: ThomasMore
If that's a cathedral and this piece of work, Mahoney, is going to build it, then I'm goin' to look into the Eastern Rite.

Before you go take a look at FSSP. But I can't say as I'd blame you.

44 posted on 05/01/2002 11:09:41 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
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To: NYer; history_matters; patent; Notwithstanding; JMJ333; Aunt Polgara; AgThorn; IM2Phat4U...
CARDINALS AND BISHOPS, PLEASE LEAVE THE CHANCERIES AND COME AMONG US TO HEAL

Uhhh, lets see, this should read:

CARDINALS AND BISHOPS, PLEASE LEAVE THE CHANCERIES

AND then maybe we can be HEALed

The hierarchy created this mess. they will not, they cannot fix it.

That is up to the laity and the Pope. The rest of the "middle management" with a full notable exceptions just needs to GO!

45 posted on 05/01/2002 11:11:07 AM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
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To: Catholic_list
Look at the abominations that Cardinal Mahoney hast wrought. Don your barf bag. Especially before reading #39.
46 posted on 05/01/2002 11:13:05 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
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To: Aquinasfan
She was removed from the old cathedral building, and interred in an unmarked niche in the chapel of the Archbishops at New Calvary Cemetery Mausoleum; perhaps she is the new patroness of underpaid cemetery workers.

For those not in the know, this is a dig at the good Cardinal's busting up of his cemetery worker's attempt to form a union. Apparently he runs the Catholic Cememteries as a profit center for himself.

SD

47 posted on 05/01/2002 11:13:42 AM PDT by SoothingDave
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To: Steve0113
Who the hell does he think he is to be "designing a liturgy"? Has he ever heard of the G.I.R.M.?

Say that again. He has zero authority to "design a liturgy"

SD

48 posted on 05/01/2002 11:14:30 AM PDT by SoothingDave
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To: NYer
There's a climate of fear in the diocese," said "Father Jim Franklin," pastor of a vital, crowded parish in a minority neighborhood. "I thank God for Vatican II. But let's look at what it really said about the liturgy, not someone else's version of it."

And the laity is supposed to be obedient to this kind of overlording? I don't think so! It seems that clericalism is alive and well! These liberals have dug in like a Lone Star Tick. They've infiltrated every level of the hierarchy. Its time to push back!

49 posted on 05/01/2002 11:15:57 AM PDT by ThomasMore
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To: american colleen
So shall we walk around it 7 days and blow our horns?
50 posted on 05/01/2002 11:16:21 AM PDT by tiki
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To: Mike Fieschko
To the baptismal font!



Here's another funny one ...



Wasn't the 'theme music' something from Franz Liszt?
51 posted on 05/01/2002 11:21:35 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
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To: Mike Fieschko
That second picture's MING the MERCILESS, isn't it? Good likeness.
52 posted on 05/01/2002 11:26:51 AM PDT by maryz
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To: SoothingDave
For those not in the know, this is a dig at the good Cardinal's busting up of his cemetery worker's attempt to form a union. Apparently he runs the Catholic Cememteries as a profit center for himself.

SD

This is numbing. It's time for me to learn how to do the chaplet of the Divine Mercy.

53 posted on 05/01/2002 11:28:44 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
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To: maryz
In a book by Christopher Derrick (I forget which) is a quote which I still recall: "A liturgist is an affliction sent by God so that in times of no overt persecution, a Catholic need not be denied the privilege of suffering for his faith."

Great insight and too true. It's like they're playing little games, slightly or enormously changing the rules so that their pride can show. Creating something new to be remembered by instead of remembering that we come to worship God and His Son, Jesus Christ and that is what is to be remembered. The priest, the liturgist, the musician should fade into the background and present Christ instead of themselves and their egos.

54 posted on 05/01/2002 11:30:24 AM PDT by tiki
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To: tiki
So shall we walk around it 7 days and blow our horns?

LOL! I would consider travelling there from Boston for that Freep.

55 posted on 05/01/2002 11:31:18 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
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To: SMEDLEYBUTLER
Wow (to that inside photo) Where is the *Catholic* in there? They call that a Cathedral?!!!!! Saints preserve us!
56 posted on 05/01/2002 11:35:36 AM PDT by Domestic Church
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To: tiki
The priest, the liturgist, the musician should fade into the background and present Christ instead of themselves and their egos.

This is one reason I prefer the old Mass -- there was a lot less scope for "individual expression." Granted, many priests say the new Mass devoutly and without self-aggrandizement, but with some of them I get the feeling that the Mass is distracting me from the Mass!

57 posted on 05/01/2002 11:40:11 AM PDT by maryz
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To: maryz
That second picture's MING the MERCILESS, isn't it? Good likeness.

Yes.
58 posted on 05/01/2002 11:42:39 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
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To: Domestic Church
And you wonder about the predicament we are now in, when something like this was allowed to happen....It is high time the Clergy assume responsibility of saving souls. People are clamoring for help, the stress we are living under can only be alleviated by a sincere return to the basics of Catholic teachings....Priests take seriously your calling, you are very special individuals annointed to preach and bring us mortals closer to the gates of heaven. I'm more than positive the Almighty has some very special reward for those of you who are truly dedicated.
59 posted on 05/01/2002 12:09:58 PM PDT by ejo
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To: tiki
That's what I was thinking... we just can't have anyone inside when we do it!
60 posted on 05/01/2002 12:31:13 PM PDT by american colleen
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