A blog dedicated to photographs of churches and church architecture in the Rocky Mountain West.
Monday, February 22, 2021
Monday, February 1, 2021
Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.
Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observa...: 1. Populism and racism aren't the same thing, even if some populist are racist. Theodore Roosevelt. He was a populist, and a progressi...
The entry it self is fairly long. I'm only linking in the ones that are relevant here.
Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.
5. Apparently "innocent until proven guilty" is something that nobody really believes. . . or at least it doesn't apply to Catholic clerics.
I haven't commented on this before and perhaps I shouldn't here, but I'm going to anyhow.
The Tribune has been following, understandably, the legal woes of retired Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart now for years. Bishop Hart was accused of sexual ickyness with male minors.
During the same period of time during which Hart has been dealing with this, three local Protestant ministers have faced the same accusations, and they all proved true. Mention of it in the Press was very brief. No following story occurred. Hart's story has, however, proven different.
The initial investigation lead the Laramie County authorities to pass on doing anything. They didn't see enough evidence. The current Bishop, however, Bishop Biegler, chose to revive the matter within the church itself and that lead to it being looked at by the authorities a second time. On that second occasion, the prosecutor in Natrona County again determined not to charge Bishop Hart with anything. That lead to criticism, he reopened the file and, after some time had passed, he once again determined not to file charges.
The internal church matter, however, went on to some sort of tribunal at the Vatican. And now it also has determined that there's not enough there to do anything.
With this being the case, Bishop Hart, over a period of decades, has endured and prevailed over four separate prosecutorial episodes, three at the state level, and one at hte Vatican level.
The American myth is that you are innocent until proven guilty. Hart hasn't been proven guilty of anything. The Tribune, however, continues to treat his as if he is guilty adn getting away with it. Indeed, Bishop Biegler isn't helping much either as, having gotten this rolling, he's still basically sending out signals that he believes that Hart is guilty and will be crediting his accusers in spite of yaers and years of such efforts having failed. This gets to something regarding Bishop Biegler we'll deal with in a moment, but we'll note this here.
Bishop Hart gets this sort of attention as he's Catholic. The Catholic Church has gone through a horrific episode recently, now mostly addressed, with clerics who are now all older having committed terrible sexual transgressions. Most of these, however, seem to have arisen due to a vareity of factors that let in priests who were not there for the right reasons, although their views are ones that the press also genuinely celebrates. Indeed, this takes us back to the culture wars item above, as Catholic clerics that are loyal to the Church's traditional beliefs and dogma are ones that the press really doesn't like.
And for that reason, it doesn't like the church itself, which is why this gets so much press but real proven accusations by protestant minister is the same readership field, do not.
6. Bishop Biegler and the rearward gaze.
We're now a full year into a present massive crisis that has caused a crisis in the Church but to look at the Diocese of Cheyenne, you'd not know it.
The Bishop has suspended the obligation to attend Mass on what is now running up on a year. I had real doubts about this early on, but as the pandemic deepened, I have to admit that at some point, that's valid. As soon as the churches were opened back up, I started going back to Mass, but in the recent deepened episode, I suspended going, taking advantage of the dispensation as I had a childhood asthma condition and I really don't want to get virus, particularly with vaccinations come on so soon.
Anyhow, if you check in on the Diocese website the first thing you are going to find is a statement by Bishop Biegler about retried Bishop Hart.
Bishop Hart was the bishop here from 1978 until 2001. I.e., he hasn't been the bishop for 20 years. He's been retired for 20 years. We're on our third bishop since that time.
Wyoming, as we've noted above, is a highly transient state. There's a core of us diehards who were born here, and who will die here, and who are watching people come and go in the meantime. And quite a few of us, although its a minority in the state's population, are Catholic. Quite a few of the transients are too.
Most of the people in the pews have very low interest, in this point, in the Joseph Hart saga. It doesn't impact our daily lives whatsoever. When Hart was last Bishop, I was 37 years old and my youngest child was a baby.
The pandemic does impact my daily life.
During the entire pandemic, I haven't had a representative of the parish reach out even once. I've reached in several times, but at the time the pandemic struck I'd only recently gone off of a parish council.
Indeed, the pandemic struck at a particularly bad time, in this context, for me, as I'd gone off of the council and I stepped down as a lector as the Mass time didn't work well for my spouse and both kids were headed off to Laramie. I'd been a lector at that point for years and years, and I do miss it. But as that occurred it was also the case that the downtown parish was clearly being changed into the Hispanic parish. That's fine, but Mass times were also altered for reasons that aren't clear to me, and therefore I went across town to another parish. The entire process left me feeling a bit unmoored as the parish that I'd served at quickly became pretty unrecognizable, the new Priest had no idea who I was, the focus was on a demographic that needs to be focused on but which I'm not part of, and then the pandemic hit.
The parish I was going to did a good job at first at dealing with the crisis but then the Bishop ordered the doors closed. I'm sure I'm just lost to where I was at, and now I'm barely known where I am. I get that.
What I don't get, quite frankly, is why there wasn't a full scale effort to require the parishes to reach out to parishioners. There wasn't. Or at least there wasn't one that I could see. And to check in on the Diocese website to learn the latest in regard to the church and the pandemic is a disappointment, as the information is hard to find. News on Bishop Biegler and Bishop Hart is easy to find, however.
And here's the point. In a pandemic in which our connections with our parish is now strained and souls stand to be lost, dealing with a problem that's now 20 years in our review mirror should not be front and center.