Bishop Barron: Election of atheist as Harvard chaplain president ‘complete and abject surrender’

New York City, N.Y., May 9, 2018 / 03:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A surprise performance by the Sistine Chapel Choir at the Met Gala this week left attendees in awe and helped convey the joy and beauty of the Church, said one of the organizers of the performance.

The choir’s performance had not been announced in advance, coming as a surprise to those present at the May 7 Met Gala, which takes place annually on the first Monday of May and serves as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This year the Met exhibition, which opens May 10 and runs through October 2018, carries the theme “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” and features around 40 items on loan from the Vatican.

The items, many of which come from the Sistine Chapel Sacristy’s Office for Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, range in time period from the mid-1700s up to the pontificate of Saint John Paul II.

Given the special nature of the Vatican items, they will be set up in a separate display from the other pieces, which include religious art from the Met collection itself and around 150 designer fashion pieces intended to pay homage to Catholicism and which draw inspiration from Catholic iconography, liturgy and other aspects of the faith tradition.

John Hale, one of the leading organizers of the choir’s surprise performance at the gala, told CNA that the evening “was really a wow-moment.”

Hale sits on the board of directors for the Vatican’s Patrons of the Arts, which consists of different chapters, most of which are in the United States, who fund restoration projects for the priceless treasures housed in the Vatican Museums.

At one point after the performance, Hale said Anna Wintour, Met board member and editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine Vogue, told him guests were unusually silent, commenting that “this is the quietest I’ve ever seen for this gala.”

Wintour, Hale said, told him attendees “were absolutely enthralled” by the performance. That sentiment, he added, “summed it up beautifully.”

“I spoke with a number of the attendees and mixed with them right after the performance and it was perfect silence, there was very good applause and reaction…so many folks were just really moved.”

Commonly referred to as “the pope’s choir,” the Sistine Chapel Choir consists of 20 professional singers from around the world, as well as a treble section composed of 35 boys aged 9-13, called the Pueri Cantores.

With a 1,500-year history, the Sistine Chapel Choir is believed to be the oldest active choir in the world.

According to Hale, who is also president and co-owner of Corporate Travel Service, the invitation to sing at the Met Gala came during the choir’s U.S. mini-tour in September 2017, during which the choir sold out performances in Washington D.C., New York and Detroit.

The choir’s director, Maestro Massimo Palombella, had approached Hale several years ago about creating a tour in the U.S. The September mini-version was essentially a test run, Hale said, and given the choir’s success during their fall tour, a longer nationwide tour is being organized for this summer.

Hale said he was initially hesitant when he was asked to help organize a performance at the gala, and had concerns over sensitivity to the Catholic faith. However, when the Vatican green-lighted the choir’s visit, he jumped on board and kept the performance under wraps for nearly a year up until the moment the choir filed in and began singing.

And having worked with the Met to get all the details in order, “I can really say they were not only respectful, they really wanted to communicate the beauty and faith of the Church,” he said. “I really had that sense, and it was very sincere. I was very moved by how sincere they were.”

The exhibit itself was “beautifully done,” and serves as “a real opportunity to express the Church’s teaching through beauty, through truth,” Hale said. “The same with the performance of the Sistine Chapel Choir.”

While there was some “outlandish fashion” that hit the red carpet at the gala, the vast majority of the 600 some attendees were “dressed beautifully and very appropriately,” he said.

“That might not be picked up traditionally because the media wants the outliers,” he said, explaining that while it is important to be sensitive to how the Church is portrayed, the Church also has to “go out.”

“We have to communicate beauty, and we have been invited, as a Church, to communicate what is our expression of beauty and our making manifest God’s presence through beauty,” he said, adding that in his opinion, “it would have been a crime not to respond to that invitation.”

Ultimately, what gets communicated through the beauty of things like fashion and music is God’s love, Hale said. “Everyone wants to be loved and we all need to be loved by God.”

Referring to a recent pastoral letter written by Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron titled “Unleash the Gospel,” which spoke of the need to find “shallow entry points” for evangelization, Hale said the Met exhibit and gala “was an entry point into encountering God through the true beauty and good.”

Choir members themselves felt both appreciated and respected by gala attendees, he said, noting that a number of the singers told him they could see people in the front row, and it was obvious they were captivated.

“Several choir members commented on the smiles, the joy, they could see genuine joy,” he said. “There was an exchange and a communication of joy that was palpable and apparent to the choir members and to the attendees.”

[…]

Fort Worth, Texas, Feb 3, 2020 / 03:48 pm (CNA).- A Fort Worth diocesan priest who resigned his post and later attempted to rescind his resignation has dropped a lawsuit against Bishop Michael Olson and the Diocese of Fort Worth— a lawsuit which alleged that the bishop had defamed him by implying he is a threat to children.

In June 2018, Olson asked Father Richard Kirkham, former pastor of St. Martin de Porres parish in Prosper, Texas, to resign his pastorate, because the priest did not report to authorities what appeared to the bishop to be a case of a priest abusing a vulnerable adult.   

Last week, Kirkham dropped the lawsuit he had filed in June 2019. In that lawsuit, Kirkham and his attorney had argued that the bishop had, in interviews with the Star-Telegram, implied that Kirkham’s removal was because he posed a danger to minors and the vulnerable.

According to Kirkham’s attorney, John Walsh, the lawsuit was dropped because Olson eventually clarified that Kirkham’s resignation did not result from any failure to report the sexual abuse of child, and there are not any allegations that Father Kirkham has sexually abused a child.

In 2017, Kirkham apparently became aware that a Dallas priest, whose name has not been publicly released, was having an affair with a married Church employee.

According to court documents, Kirkham and the priest were friends, and would often speak lewdly over alcoholic drinks.

In May 2018, Kirkham wrote a letter to the priest. Kirkham claimed in the letter that while the two priests had been having drinks at a restaurant, the priest had related to Kirkham graphic details about his alleged sexual encounters with the woman.

The letter depicted in graphic sexual detail what the priest had allegedly told Kirkham about the alleged affair.

Also in the letter, Kirkham threatened to tell the priest’s bishop if the affair continued.

“You have admitted to me more than once that you have a drinking problem, you can’t stop, you black out,” Kirkham wrote to the priest in the letter.

“You are a substance abuser. You have an addiction to pornography, masturbation and sex. Your behavior is reckless and risky. You need to seek help.”

Though Kirkham never formally reported the alleged affair, the letter came to the attention of the Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas, because the Dallas priest shared it with him.

But the Dallas Diocese says the alleged affair might have never actually occurred.

“The allegation of an inappropriate relationship between two adults was looked into and denied by both parties,” Annette Gonzales Taylor, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Dallas, said in a statement to CNA this week.

“The priest in question was on a leave of absence while the allegation was looked into and assigned to a parish afterward.”

The Dallas diocese has not officially disclosed the accused priest’s name.

A Fort Worth spokesman told CNA that the Dallas diocese has not officially communicated the results of their investigation to Fort Worth.

Olson said in a Dec. 15, 2019 pastoral letter that he learned about Kirkham’s letter to the Dallas priest from Burns, who sent him a redacted copy. The priest’s first name, “Paul,” and the parish, “St. Francis,” remain visible.

Olson says he spoke to the Dallas priest with Burns’ permission. He told the Star-Telegram in July 2019 that he knows the Dallas priest, having served as his seminary rector, but says he does not have “a peer relationship with him.”

Olson said in his December letter that he asked Kirkham to resign because he had failed to report what he suspected to be the abuse of a vulnerable adult.

“Father Kirkham claimed to have learned about the alleged misconduct that he obscenely detailed in the letter over half a year before writing the letter to the other priest, but he never reported it.” Olson said.

Pat Svacina, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Fort Worth, told CNA that the term “vulnerable adult” is not “denoted by definition” in the diocese’ policies, but that “as bishop, [Olson] made the judgement that this was a vulnerable adult situation that should have been reported immediately.”

According to the Star-Telegram, Kirkham admitted in a Jan. 7 deposition that he recognized the relationship between the priest and a church employee as abuse against a vulnerable person, but also that he never planned to make an official report.

Svacina also said that Bishop Burns had, after “an investigation,” concluded that the Dallas priest’s alleged affair had not occured.

Despite this, Svacina said that Bishop Burns had not contacted the Fort Worth diocese directly with the results of the investigation into the Dallas priest accused in the letter.

“Bishop Burns never informed Bishop Olson what the investigation [was],” Svacina told CNA.

“We learned it through news reports, when the Dallas Diocese told news media there that they investigated and found no grounds for [the affair]. We don’t know the details…what we know is through the media.”

Olson said he asked Kirkham in June 2018 to resign, and Kirkham did, but he later retained an attorney and sought to rescind his resignation, which is permitted under canon law. Olson refused to reverse Kirkham’s resignation, and Kirkham appealed the decision to the Vatican.

The Congregation for Clergy upheld his resignation in July, and Kirkham is currently awaiting the results of his final appeal.

Kirkham was at first unable to retrieve his belongings from the rectory where he was living because Olson ordered the locks changed while Kirkham was out of state, the Dallas Morning News reported. A judge in June 2019 allowed Kirkham to reenter the rectory to retrieve his belongings.

Kirkham did not respond to CNA’s attempts to contact him for comment.

A number of Texas Catholics, in the form of an online group called FRK Advocates, have formed a website raising questions about Olson’s judgement in disciplining Kirkham, and blaming Olson for the resignations of two other diocesan priests and the closure of a mission church.

Olson has said there were no disciplinary issues with either of the priests mentioned by the group, and that he was surprised at their resignation. He also defended his decision to close San Mateo Mission, noting that the Congregation for Clergy has twice upheld his decision to do so.

FRK Advocates sent a petition to the Vatican during Nov. 2019, signed by about 1,500 parishioners from 20 parishes in the Fort Worth diocese, asking Pope Francis to remove Olson as bishop. The petition detailed alleged verbal abuse to several diocesan priests in the Fort Worth Diocese and alleged verbal abuse and demeaning conduct towards parishioners.

In a Jan. 28 pastoral letter, Olson did not mention Kirkham’s failure to report the alleged abuse as a reason Olson asked for his resignation. Olson said in that letter that he had asked Kirkham to resign because “I had come to believe that Father Kirkham needed to take a step back from ministry.”

“I had previously issued him a formal rebuke for dishonesty, and he had also acknowledged to me that there were issues that he needed to address,” Olson continued.

“This was especially apparent in light of the deeply disturbing letter he sent to a priest of the Dallas Diocese which contained many lewd communications they had shared over drinks.”

[…]

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Sioux Falls, S.D., Aug 11, 2021 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
In response to questions from Catholics about COVID-19 vaccine mandates being imposed by employers or other authorities, the bishops of South Dakota said this week that Ca… […]