We learn in this week's Key that the Chancellor of the KC-SJ Diocese, Claude Sasso, has announced that Bishop Finn, at the end of his year-long study, has established the Helmsing Institute in place of the Center for Pastoral Whatchamacallits and the New Whine Program.
Hmm. Well, it's baseball season, and even good hitters don't bat .1000, do they? Why on earth would Finn name a new program after the man who, whatever his personal spiritual life was, governed the local Church through the disaster of the Sixties and Seventies? A better choice would have been to name it after a great missionary--Fr. DeSmet, perhaps, who brought Catholicism to this part of the world. One of them would have been a much better model, considering the state of our city these days and the task that is before Bp. Finn.
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4 comments:
I would have expected Archbishop O'Hara, since he organized the National Center of the Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine.
Have you guys ever read anything by Helmsing? The man was a powerhouse of holiness. I mean, see if you can get your hands on the denunciation of the NCR...it exudes holiness and proper use of authority. Helmsing was holy, orthodox and downright inspiring.
Am I not mistaken that Dr. Claude Sasso is the Vice-Chancellor? Don't want to knock Fr. Offet out of his position!
You're right; I knew that but was typically sloppy. Dr. Sasso is the Vice-Chancellor. Fr. Bradley Offutt (that's the proper spelling-I checked) is the Chancellor.
I made no criticism of Bp. Helmsing's personal holiness and orthodoxy. My criticism is of the fruits of his governance of the diocese, much as I have of Pope John Paul II. A Bishop's duty is to teach, govern and sanctify. I am not in a position to judge how well he performed his duty of sanctification, and I accept what everyone has said about him in that regard; however, the weaknesses of his governance and the ineffectiveness of his teaching (even not knowing all the particulars of his episcopacy and attributing much of the chaos in KC to his immediate predecessor and his two successors) is manifested today in the lack of vocations, the dozens of closed churches, the continued presence of the National Catholic Distorter on Armour Boulevard as a "Catholic" publication, etc.
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