Hey everybody,
I’m coming into this newsletter in a bit of a transition week.
Next week, I’m taking my family on our delayed-until-now summer trip together. And this past weekend, Mrs. Flynn and I hosted the big annual gala fundraiser for the Catholic special education non-profit on whose board we sit.
The gala raised – thanks be to God, and to my wife’s hard work, and to good donors – a lot of money, which we use to give grants to Catholic schools for the enrollment of kids with significant disabilities — to help hire staff, to modify curriculum, to train teachers.
We do that work because we’re convinced that building a culture of life happens by helping communities to include people who are otherwise marginalized or excluded, by helping them to be known, and by adapting the culture and disposition of the community to welcome them.
In other words, we think Catholic schools are more Catholic when they include people with significant disabilities and learning differences, and that all students and faculty are much the better for knowing and including them.
Since the gala, though, I’ve been struck by the context which makes a project like that work. We raised a lot this weekend, and we did it because of the uniquely generous and entrepreneurial culture of American Catholicism.
When Catholics began coming to this country, there was no Catholic infrastructure to rival that of the places from which they’d come. And obviously, the philosophical commitments (and cultural prejudices) of the American experiment have meant from the beginning that there’d be no public support for ecclesiastical institutions, no federal backstopping or grantmaking to most of the ecclesial initiatives and apostolates that have been built in this country. We are nearly unique in that our Catholic schools have no substantial taxpayer support, and in that most U.S. jurisdictions don’t even have legal categories in which to accommodate the canonical structures of the Church.
Immigrants, having arrived here and seeing no ecclesiastical infrastructure and no government interest in all that, just built it themselves. They built parish churches and schools and seminaries, universities and hospitals, so that Catholics would have places to be educated, formed, and treated, and so that the Church could exercise the ministries to which she’s been called. They recruited religious from across the ocean, they wrote home for priests.
That history hasn’t always been smooth. We’ve had a spate of controversies emerge from the homespun and self-funded version of the ecclesiastical society that has been created in this country. But for all the warts of that history, it has also formed in Catholics a disposition to be creative in developing Catholic initiatives, of a piece with the general American tendency towards creative initiative, and a disposition to be generous to new ideas and new projects.
There are times when the “donor class” of the American Catholic landscape falls under scrutiny, and times when it should — when ecclesiastical decision-making is steered by the desires of major donors, for example, rather than the actual judgment of ecclesiastical authorities with the sacramental charism to lead. And the intermingling of ideological deep-pocketed donors with non-profit Catholic journalism has been almost always a disaster for truthful reporting, which is why we prefer to beg (or ask politely) for your 8 bucks a month, to keep us afloat.
But it should also be said that most of the strongest and most vital projects of the Church in the U.S. also owe some debt to people willing to back big and audacious ideas, and bring them into fruition.
In short, when donors set the agenda in a way that undercuts the authority of the Church’s leadership, that’s a problem.
But we shouldn’t forget that more often, donors large and small empower the Church to do good things, to be more fully and freely herself. And that’s a piece of American Catholic culture well worth promoting and encouraging.
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And since Pillar Podcast listeners have spent years listening to Ed and me do “hat chat” and other species of commentary on my side-hobby as a charity auctioneer, here’s a clip from Saturday’s gala, in which I am just at the tail end of auctioning off a pair of fancy dinners to some generous donors:
Now here’s the news.
The news
The trial could begin this autumn.
Shaleta is accused of embezzling almost $300,000 from the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of St. Peter, which covers the western half of the United States.
Reports of the theft first emerged in reporting from The Pillar in February, and Shaleta was arrested a few weeks later in early March, at San Diego’s airport while he was trying to leave the country, with more than $9,000 in cash. His resignation as diocesan bishop was accepted soon after.
And just as an example of why good journalism matters: Our sources have told us that the San Diego Sheriff’s investigation into Shaleta’s alleged crimes was more-or-less stalled when The Pillar first reported on it, largely because investigators seemed to lack clarity on what control a bishop is supposed to have over diocesan funds, and what norms restrict that control. But The Pillar’s reporting, which aimed to give a clear sketch of the allegations against the bishop and the available proofs, seems to have provided considerably more clarity, and Shaleta was arrested soon after.
Anyway, when people tell you that human-based journalism doesn’t matter, you can remind them of that story.
As to Shaleta, The Pillar reported last week that the bishop declined the prospect of a plea bargain in the case, telling friends he expects to be exonerated in an eventual trial. Whether that happens or not, we’ll soon find out.
And we reported this week that Shaleta petitioned recently to have his ankle monitor removed, and a judge rejected that petition — reportedly judging the bishop a flight risk because of his very frequent trips to Tijuana. While Shaleta claims that he was in Tijuana serving the poor, The Pillar has reported that the bishop visited numerous times a brothel and burlesque club linked to human trafficking.
If convicted, Shaleta could spend 15 years in prison. Here’s the latest.
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This week, Luke Coppen sat down for a great conversation with Dr. Sebastian Ostritsch, a German philosopher and journalist, to learn why that is.
The agreement marks another step in the healing of a decades-long rift between Syro-Malabar Catholics who favor the Holy Qurbana celebrated facing the people throughout and proponents of the uniform mode, in which the priest faces the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
The Pillar spoke with Fr. Yves Carlos Romulus, who lived in the village where the attack took place, and was forced out under a hail of gunfire during an attack on his church last year.
Fr. Romulus, who knew some of the victims in last week’s killing, said that as their country continues to deteriorate, people “were already living in an atmosphere of fear, pain, and indignation.”
“Now it is even worse.”
The priest also said that the local Church can do little without support from around the world.
The postponement is an indication that a tough Vatican stance on the German synodal way seems to be having its desired effect, after years of an escalating game of chicken between the German bishops’ conference and the Apostolic See. In fact, one way to describe the situation could be that in that game of chicken, Germany’s swerved.
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Finally, Pope Leo issued on Saturday a reform of the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, which allows the governing synods of Eastern Catholic Churches to depose from office their patriarchs, if they cause “irreparable damage” to the communion of the Church.
Ed and I have an analysis about it here.
And, I’ll tell you, on first glance, I thought this might be a good thing — a way for bishops close to an Eastern Catholic Church to address rampant problems caused by their patriarch. I assumed it was a response to the issues which until recently plagued and divided the Chaldean Catholic Church, most of which centered around divisive political and ecclesiastical steps taken by Cardinal Louis Sako, until this year the Chaldean patriarch.
But then I started talking with Eastern Catholic clergy and canonists. They saw things much differently.
I’m always hesitant to imagine the Vatican is playing 4-D chess when they might instead be playing checkers. But there are some observeration worth noting.