{"id":461,"date":"2009-05-04T16:23:10","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T16:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/notre-dame-reparation-mass-bis.html"},"modified":"2009-05-04T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T16:23:10","slug":"notre-dame-reparation-mass-bis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/notre-dame-reparation-mass-bis.html","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame “reparation” Mass: Bishop Wenski explains"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mass of Reparation for sins against the culture of life, and specifically for the Notre Dame invite to Barack Obama, took place Sunday evening at the Cathedral of St. James in Orlando. [NB: I had the date wrong in earlier version here–thanks to CWNews for reminder, and commenter Jerry below.] <\/p>\n

When the news broke<\/a>, the theology behind the Mass (whose sins are we atoning for exactly?) drew quizzical stares across the Catholic spectrum, except of course from the hardliners against Obama and UND prez Father Jenkins. <\/p>\n

So what was up? At the Mass, Orlando Bishop Thomas Wenski minced no words<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

“We Catholics have become too complacent about the legal killing of unborn children in America and elsewhere,” Wenski said in his Reparation Mass remarks at St. James Cathedral in Orlando. “This complacency contributed to the climate that led Notre Dame’s president to think it would be no big deal to defy the bishops in granting this honorary degree to President Obama.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Before the Mass, Wenski called the Notre Dame administrators “clueless,” according to the Orlando Sentinel report, and added in reference to them: “It might be too late to change their minds,” Wenski said, “but it might not be too late to change their hearts.”<\/p>\n

I’m not sure the bishops will change either with this approach.  <\/p>\n

Late last week, speaking to the AP’s national religion writer<\/a>, Eric Gorski, Wenski who Gorski accurately describes as usually a lightning-rod type–said the idea for the Mass was in response to the organized campaign by conservative Catholics:<\/p>\n

\n

As for Wenski, he issued a statement and then came up with the Mass idea after angry Notre Dame graduates from central Florida asked for guidance about how to respond, he said in an interview. <\/p>\n

“I figured, ‘I’m a bishop–I’m not going to tell them to attack Notre Dame with a pitchfork,'” said Wenski. “I’m going to tell them to go pray.” <\/p>\n

Wenski said he will not “preach a tirade against Notre Dame” during the Monday night Mass at Orlando’s Cathedral of St. James. What must be atoned for, Wenski said, is complacency among U.S. Catholics about the legal killing of unborn children, which contributed to the climate that allowed Notre Dame to think it was all right to honor Obama. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Gorski includes the voices of several supporters and some critics, more like analysts–like Father Mark Mass, SJ, who was as perceptive as ever:<\/p>\n

\n

“I think the bishops who believe abortion is the ultimate litmus test look at the polls and realize Catholics are not listening to them,” said the Rev. Mark Massa, co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University. “They’re playing a very dangerous game because they do not have the moral authority they had before the sex abuse crisis, and they’re trying to find a toehold and get heard.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone here in Orlando? Or attended? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}